Teknomorphs 2: The Rescue
by Cyblade Silver
Summary: The next installment of my Teknomorphs series. Someone new comes into Slade's life, and things begin to get a bit more interesting for the Animorphs.
1. Called

_**Disclaimer:** I really, really hate doing these things. Anyone who knows what's what knows that these characters aren't mine. I just own bits of the storyline. And Tekkaman Starfire, Starfire belongs to me._

**Teknomorphs 2:**

**The Rescue**

All was quiet in the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic at this hour of the morning. As quiet as it ever got anyway, with all the injured animals making noise in their cages. But one of the occupants of the big red barn that housed the Clinic wasn't listening to the nocturnal sounds of the patients.

Slade, asleep in his bed of straw in the hayloft, tossed and turned as he saw images of a place deep underground. There was some kind of plant that only grew in that one place, and there were others – things, people like him – that were down there, too. One of them was smaller and more clear in his mind's eye than the others. Indicating that this one was most likely important to him in some way.

(…go to her…)

(What?) Slade asked muzzily, still half-asleep.

(Go to her, Slade… She needs you now.)

Slade sat up, blinking as the blanket he had pulled up over his shoulders fell quietly into his lap. He could almost swear he had just been contacted by another Teknoman. Rolling out of his makeshift bed, he stood up and looked around, trying to sense where the unknown Teknoman's telepathic presence was coming from.

But, whoever they were, they had masked their presence too well for Slade – who was still more than a bit inexperienced with his newfound skill of telepathic locating – to get even the slightest read on where they were. This would not have surprised Slade, if he had known that this was the very same individual that had guided Jake to the Radam base to rescue him. It seemed that Tekkaman Starfire, despite the rather obvious handicap of being dead for several thousand years, was still trying to aid the universe that he had fought for in his long life.

Slade wasn't thinking about any of this, since Jake hadn't told him about the weird voice that only he could hear. Or about the vivid dream that had happened when he'd gotten home more than a few days ago.

_(Where are you? Who are you?) _

_(That is not… important right now. Slade, you must go back. You must find your sister.)_

_(Sister!)_

Now Slade was really confused. Sure, he didn't remember much about his life beyond waking up naked in a barn, but he thought someone would have at least him that he had a sister.

(That is not important now, Slade.)

_(Right. Yeah, I'll just, you know, start morphing.)_

Slade flipped the blanket off his legs and started to morph. Although he had done this kind of thing before, it was still the strangest thing that he could remember doing. _But I guess I shouldn't talk, _Slade thought with a slight smirk.


	2. Homecoming

After all, what _normal_ person would be caught waking up on the hay-strewn floor of a barn, with no clothes and no memory? Slade shook his head; morphing required concentration, so he pushed those thoughts of his missing past out of his mind. Focusing on the wolf DNA that was now a part of him, he felt his body begin to change.

Even though it was probably the fourth or fifth time he'd done this kind of thing, it was still the strangest thing he had ever done. Stranger even than the time he had turned himself invisible in the horse stalls when he and the rest of the Animorphs had been chased by the staff at the race track.

Even as he held the image of the wolf in his mind, Slade fell forward onto his hands. He looked back at his legs and saw that they were now fur covered wolf legs. As he stared at his no longer human legs, Slade felt his shoulders beginning to itch, turning his head, Slade watched gray fur start growing out of the tops of his shoulders and spreading down his arms.

Once the fur had reached his hands, the hands themselves began to shrivel up and become a pair of gray, fur covered paws. Slade's ears began to slide up the sides of his head. They quickly became the sharply pointed ears of the wolf he was morphing into.

Slade's mouth and nose started to push outward, the bones making a disconcerting grinding sound as they were reshaped. His hair, still black up to this point, began to turn gray and shaggy. _Well, shaggier_, Slade thought with a short mental chuckle.

At this time, Slade was almost completely a wolf, but he was a wolf with human eyes. At last, his emerald green eyes reshaded into the gold and black eyes of a wolf. Slade leaped down from the hayloft where he slept, not caring that it was a more than sixteen-foot drop to the floor.

His four short, strong legs took the impact better than he expected. Slade raced out of the barn like a shot. Slade didn't need the direction of the voice in his head to know where he was going, since some buried instinct was already guiding him there.

Once Slade was outside the barn, he started making up for the time that he now felt he'd wasted. Slade's wolf morph was a good one for long distance travel, and he intended to push it to its limits. If the wolf actually had any limits.

The terrain seemed to blur, both in Slade's eyes and in his mind. He knew where he was going, and how he got there suddenly didn't seem to matter anymore. After what seemed like only a few seconds, Slade came to a clearing. The same clearing, in fact, that he had been dragged unconscious from only two weeks before.

Prowling around, Slade was suddenly struck by the feeling that he needed to demorph. But, at the same time, he felt that if he demorphed he would be placing himself in unnecessary danger. Slade decided to stay in his wolf morph for as long as he could. He started to dig.

Tossing dead leaves and branches around like a dog, Slade began to make progress. He could now see the thick, black-green vines that lay under the leaf-litter. Suddenly one of them reared up, slamming itself down on the spot where Slade had been standing only seconds before.

Slade edged around the vine warily, the wolf part of his mind prompting him to snarl in warning. Slade lunged at the vine, pulling at it and finally severing it with his powerful jaws and teeth. Slade tossed the vine away, then went back to digging.

Slade's digging disturbed several more of the vines, but he dealt with them quickly. At last, Slade managed to make a hole big enough for him to fit through. Before the hole had a chance to close, Slade dove through it.

Falling to the ground with a soft thump, Slade took a little time to get his bearings again. Once he was sure that this ground was at least a bit more solid than the vines he had been digging through, Slade dashed off. He knew where he was going, somehow or other, and all that remained was to get there.

His target, a pod that contained an armored figure that Slade could almost swear he somehow recognized – and not just from that weird vision – was now directly in front of him. Not wasting any more time just staring at the thing, Slade lunged forward and took a big bite out of the pod.

The pod seemed to explode, dumping the small armored figure onto the floor of the base. Sliding himself under the figure, Slade stood up slowly. As soon as he was up, a bunch of those strange vines came ripping toward him. Slade bit down on the figure's arm and took off. Leaping out through the hole he had dug just before it closed, Slade ran flat out until he was out of the reach of those vines.

Once he had put enough distance between himself and that place, Slade started demorphing. Once he was human again, Slade morphed into the horse he'd acquired at the racetrack. Somehow, Slade had no real idea how; he'd managed to keep the figure from sliding off his back while he was changing back into his human form and then morphing again.

Slade ran, taking advantage of the racehorse's greater speed and longer legs. By the time he'd made it back to the barn, the one Slade had rescued was showing signs of starting to wake up. Slade let the figure slide off his back, somehow knowing that the armor was tough enough to stand up to a fall from the back of a horse.

Taking another look at the person he'd rescued, Slade noticed that the armor was starting to glow. Slade started demorphing, as the armored figure glowed ever brighter. When Slade had finished his demorph, he saw that the person he had rescued had already changed into their human form.

It was a girl. Blonde, pale blonde at that, and she looked a bit younger than him. She was also completely naked. Slade quickly turned away, knowing that Rachel always kept a spare set of clothes in the barn for those times that she flew there, Slade hoped that she wouldn't mind if he borrowed them.

Tossing the clothes down next to the blonde girl, Slade turned away to let her dress up with some privacy.


	3. Ghosts of the past

Shara rolled over, shuddering as she felt a cold breeze blowing over her. _What? There aren't breezes underground. And anyway, there's still the fact that I'm inside a teknopod now… aren't I?_ Shara opened her eyes.

The first thing Shara noticed was that her vision was no longer filled with the blurry, liquid distorted shadows that she had become so familiar with inside the teknopod. Instead, Shara saw a dirty, hay-strewn floor, and the lower edges of what seemed to be a row of tables. Sitting up, Shara noticed two more things: one, she didn't have a single thing on, and two, that there was a pile of clothes lying next to her legs.

Picking up the clothes, Shara saw that they were about a size too big for her. _But then, it's not like I'm being given a whole lot of other options here,_ Shara thought with a soft chuckle. Once she'd gotten the clothes on, Shara could really appreciate how ill-fitting they were.

The jeans bunched up badly around her ankles, since they were made for someone about ten or eleven inches taller than her, maybe even an entire foot. Shara tugged at the shirt, which fit reasonably well except for the fact that it hung halfway down her thighs. Shara stood up and took another look around at the place where she had somehow ended up.

Shara saw that the tables she had spotted earlier held an assortment of cages. Some of them were empty, but most of them held animals. Shara walked up to one of the tables, and noticed that the only animals that were held in the cages were those of the injured variety.

Shara was currently staring down at a raccoon with a bright white bandage covering its left forepaw.

"Hey," Shara said, looking at the raccoon but talking mostly to herself, "I think I'm a little lost. D'you think you could help me?"

Laughing softly at herself, Shara wondered just how a raccoon with an injured paw was supposed to help her do anything. _Maybe I've just been watching too many Disney movies._ Shara laughed again, this time a little louder.

"I don't know about the raccoon, but I think I might be able to help you." _That voice!_ That painfully familiar voice. Shara turned slowly, trying to squash the stubborn bit of hope that was rising within her. Her brother Ness was dead, or else he might as well be.

Once Shara saw him, though, it was as if she forgot everything she had been reminding herself to think. Looking closer, Shara noticed something that completely blew away all of the concerns she had been having. _His eyes,_ Shara realized._ His eyes are still green!_

Shara knew that if Ness had been completely transformed by the Radam; his eyes would have changed to a bright crimson color, betraying the presence of the mind-parasite. Since his eyes were still their natural color, Shara knew that there was still a chance that Ness was still the older brother that she had known and loved.

Without a second thought, Shara half-ran over to Ness and hugged him, not seeing the look of confusion that passed over her brother's face.

"Oh Ness, I thought I'd never see you again!" Shara sobbed, not caring how melodramatic that line sounded. Squeezing her brother tighter, Shara was surprised to feel his hands against her shoulders. Almost as if he were trying to push her away.

__

Why would he do that? Shara wondered.


	4. Fond Remembrance

"Am I supposed to know you?" Ness asked, looking at Shara with an expression of such confusion that Shara thought for a moment that he really _didn't_ know who she was.

Leaning against Ness' chest, Shara tried to think of a reason why Ness would have no memory of her. Then she remembered that the Radam would always erase the memories of their soldiers, supposedly to make them more effective, but really to make them easier to control. _Maybe he really doesn't remember me,_ Shara thought sadly.

Shara leaned her head against her brother's chest, numbly staring out at her surroundings. Shara wasn't really seeing them, though, she wasn't really seeing much of anything at the moment. She was lost in her memories of her family, wondering if things could have been different.

hr>

Slade was confused, to say the least; the girl he had just rescued seemed very happy to see him. But she had called him by a name that he was sure wasn't his, and then when he had asked her what she had been talking about, she had gotten so sad, Slade had almost wanted to pretend that he was who she thought he had been.

Slade wondered just why this girl meant so much to him. _Could she really be my sister?_ Slade wondered. It _was_ a possibility, and this girl _did_ look almost exactly like the one in the picture he had found back at that house, the one that had seemed to call to something – some feeling or memory – that was buried deep inside him. Too deep, maybe, for Slade to find by himself. _But maybe if I had help…_ the thought was too revolutionary for Slade to hold on to for very long, but it left him with the idea that he should keep Shara around, if only for himself.

_Well, if she's going to stay here, she might as well help our cause, Slade though, as he turned away from Shara and made his way out of the barn._

hr>

Shara was pulled out of her thoughts when Ness –_ No, I guess he really isn't Ness anymore,_ Shara thought sadly – suddenly pushed away from her and turned to walk out of the door that Shara assumed they had just come in through. Just before anyone outside would have been able to see him, the boy who in another lifetime had been one of her older brothers faded slowly out of sight.

Shara had known, from her forced training inside the teknopod, about the invisibility powers that all Teknomen were given. Even though she had never seen them demonstrated practically before, Shara wasn't all that worried about the person who had once been her brother. _He was strong enough to survive, so I guess he can take care of himself. Still… _Shara sighed. Shara knew it was useless to wish that things had turned out differently, but sometimes she just couldn't help it.


	5. Feeling Again

Outside, Slade was again trying to navigate a landscape that had been drained of all color. Slade had been training himself to use his invisibility powers, ever since he had found out what they actually were. At first, Slade had thought that there was just something wrong with his eyes. it had taken him a few hours to get used to both the fact that no one could see him, and the fact that he couldn't see colors.

But, once he had gotten over those hurdles, Slade had found that it was easier sometimes to just be invisible. It certainly made his trips to the bathroom less stressful, since there was very little chance that anyone would find him there if he was invisible. Still, Slade was unwilling to use the shower if the house didn't have that hollow, empty sound that he was getting used to listening for.

Slade had lost count by now of how many times he had been forced to wash up in the river that he had found on one of his many explorations of the land around Cassie's barn. Slade hated having to bathe in the frigid water, but it was either that or risk discovery while he was trying to shower, and Slade was not willing to endanger Cassie's life just for his own comfort.

As he neared the water-pump where the morphing cube had been hidden, Slade wondered how he was going to give this Shara the power without Ax to call on. Aximili was nowhere to be found, and Slade wasn't sure he even _wanted_ the Andalite to be present for what he was about to do. _Maybe I can give the morphing power to Shara myself._

Slade nodded, it was probably just a matter of willpower anyway, and anyone who knew him would know that Slade was up to the task. Plucking the morphing cube out of its hiding place, Slade sprinted back into the barn. Where Shara was waiting for him.

When Shara heard footfalls approaching, she almost turned invisible herself. But, with some part of her mind that she didn't even know she had before, Shara could sense that it was only Slade returning to the barn. Shara wondered for a moment just how she had known that her brother's name was Slade now, but then wrote it off as being just some more implanted knowledge.

More important was the fact that Shara could sense somehow that Slade had come to some kind of decision, one that involved her in some way. Looking at her brother's hands, Shara saw an unfamiliar cube made of some kind of sky-blue metal. Shara wondered what the cube was for, but she had a feeling that she would find out sooner than later.

Slade slowed to a walk as he came back into the main area of the barn, only to find that Shara was waiting for him. She had evidently been looking right at him even when he was still invisible. _Good, at least that means that she can sense me. _Slade blew out the deep breath that he had always taken when he willed himself back into visibility.

It was odd, the way Shara was looking at him, as if there was something she had expected at first and didn't anymore. As if she was disappointed that she could no longer expect whatever she had at first, but was trying to hide it. Slade looked her over again, dressed as she was in Rachel's spare clothes, Shara didn't look like anyone Slade had met in the rather short time he had been awake.

But there was still that something… some subtle and completely unreachable feeling or memory that tied him to Shara. That made him want to protect her, made him want to help her in any way that he possibly could. It was an almost completely unknown feeling for Slade, Enforcer Teknoman that he was. Enforcers were not known for their protectiveness.


	6. New Power, New Rules

Still, the feeling was compelling enough that Slade wouldn't be able to ignore it with any kind of ease. So, maybe it was best just to listen to this strange new instinct. Another warrior, another Animorph, would probably be just the kind of thing that Jake needed anyway.

"Shara, would you come here please?"

"Sure," the girl put on a rather unconvincing sort of smile. "I'll be right there."

Suiting actions to words, Shara came striding up, still wearing that fake-looking smile that did nothing to hide the fact that for some reason she was feeling miserable. Slade tried to ignore it, it didn't have anything to do with what he was planning to do, after all. But in the end, that same feeling that had led him to rescue her in the first place made it nearly impossible for Slade to disregard something that so obviously caused Shara pain.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, Slade," Shara said, still wearing _that_ smile. "Why do you ask?"

"Because I want to know," Slade said firmly. "Something's bothering you, what is it?"

Shara turned away, folding her arms over her chest in what Slade took to be an instinctively defensive reaction. Shaking her head and seeming to clear it, Shara turned back to look at him. The smile was gone, in its place was a look of resigned sadness.

"You're not him," she said finally. "You look just like him, and your voice is exactly like his. But he isn't here, and you can never really be him again." Shara's mouth turned up in a sad, cynical half-smile, but at least it wasn't _that_ smile again. "I guess I'll just have to get used to it, though. Learn to live without him."

"Who was he, you sound like you knew him really well."

"He was my brother, we were very close."

Slade nodded, despite the fact that as far as he knew he had never had a family. Shara obviously missed this brother of hers very much, and so Slade figured that since he obviously looked so much like the brother she had lost, there was no reason that he couldn't at least protect her the way this brother of hers had probably done.

There was no real substitute for a family member, Slade knew, but they could at least be friends. Slade held out the morphing cube.

"What's that thing?"

Slade flicked his eyes to the morphing cube for a minute before looking back at Shara. She looked confused, and Slade imagined that he had looked pretty much the same way when Jake had sent him to retrieve the cube in the first place.

"Just put your hand on one side of it, I'll try to explain after that," Slade said. _Truth is, even I really don't have that good of an idea what this thing does. I just know that it works._

Shara placed her right hand on the top of the cube, exactly opposite of where Slade was holding it from. A strange tingling sensation made its way up from Shara's hand all the way to her shoulder. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling, not at all, and compared to the things she had already been though, Shara found it almost ordinary.

"What just happened to me?"

"You were just given the morphing power," Slade said, as casually as if he was merely talking about the weather.

"Oh. What's the 'morphing power'?" Shara asked.

Slade rubbed the back of his neck, wondering how to explain something that had never really been explained to him. "Well, I think it's a kind of metamorphosis. You know, like when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly? Anyway, that's what we can do now."

"'We'? You mean you have this power, too?" Shara asked, curious.

"Yeah. That was what gave me the idea to give it to you," Slade nodded. "There are some other people that have it, too. I thought, since you're probably going to be staying here, you might want to help with what we're doing."

"What _are_ you doing?"

"There's this group of aliens, called the Yeerks, who are trying to take over the world," Slade shrugged. "Pretty standard fare for evil alien invaders, if you ask me." _What made me say _that Slade wondered to himself, then shrugged. "Anyway, there's also this group of kids that's trying to stop them, and they gave me that power so I could help them."

"Is that all?" Shara asked. "I get the feeling that there's more to it than that."


	7. The will to live

"You'd be right, then," Slade nodded. "The morphing power has it's own set of limitations, the most important of which is that you can never stay in one morph for more than two hours. Any longer than that, and you'll end up trapped as whatever animal you morphed for the rest of your life. Or at least, however long that animal lives."

"I see," Shara said, folding her arms over her chest again. This wasn't the defensive reaction that it had been earlier, Slade could sense, it was a thinking pose. "Well, how long have you been at this? You seem to know a lot about it."

Slade scratched the side of his head, suddenly noticing that he had an itch there. "Two weeks, but I learned most of what I know from the other Animorphs. Cassie in particular."

"Animorphs? That's an interesting name. Who are the others, anyway?" Shara asked.

"Well, there's Jake; he's our leader. Then there's Marco; who's in charge of security for the army. He's kind of strange though, I don't know whether to like him or not, but I do trust him. Then there's Rachel; she's one of the strongest warriors I know. She does get a little overzealous sometimes, though. Then there's Cassie; she's Jake's Second, and she seems to be really good at reading people. The last Animorph, other than me, is Aximili. I don't really know what his position in the army is, but he seems so far to be just another warrior."

Shara nodded. "So, what do we do now?"

Slade thought for a moment, remembering what Cassie had said and done when he had first joined up with the Animorphs. "We have to find you some kind of bird morph," Slade said. Looking around at all the cages on the tables in front of him. "Which one would you like?"

….

Shara, too, looked around at the cages on the tables. Walking past Slade, Shara came to the same cage that she had been standing in front of when Slade had first made himself known to her. Turning right, Shara stepped over to the next cage. So far, all she had found were a bunch of woodland animals. Not that there was anything wrong with woodland animals in general, but there were no birds for her to choose from.

Shara sighed, wondering just what she was getting herself into. _It's not like I'm being presented with a lot of other choices here, though,_ she thought to herself sadly. She couldn't go back home, because there was no one there to help _make_ it a home again; the house would just feel too empty without the others. There _was_ the option of going back to where she had been earlier this morning, but that wasn't something that Shara was going to let herself consider for very long.

__

What, just go back to Darkon? Forget about the way he completely destroyed not only my life, but the lives of everyone I loved? Forget the way he just murdered the people he couldn't use? As she thought this, Shara began to shake with suppressed rage and sadness. _…Dad…_ Shara held on to the rage; rage was good. Other emotions would hold her back, but rage would give her the energy to press forward, even without the people who had meant so much to her.

__

Darkon. That ancient bastard is going to pay for what he did to me, and to the others. Now that her mind was made up, Shara concentrated on finding what she needed. Walking past all of the cages on the table to her right, Shara came across a seagull. The thick bandages wrapped around its right wing made it pretty well obvious to her why this particular seagull was in here.

__

Okay, so now I know this is some kind of wild animal hospital, looking at the gull, Shara realized that she didn't really know what to do now that she had found what she had been looking for.

"Okay, I found one. What now?"

Slade came walking up, looking at Shara first and then at the bird she had found. "Oh, you found a seagull? Great, I think I'll get that one, too. After you acquire it first, of course."

"You're going to have to tell me how to do that. You do know that, right?" Shara raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah," Slade looked a bit chagrinned. "I guess I got ahead of myself there. First you have to open the cage," Slade said, pointing out the lock for her.

"Right, opening the cage," Shara nodded, and quickly undid the cage's latch. "What now?"

"I'll show you," reaching for the seagull, Slade suddenly became uncertain again. "Unless you'd still like to go first, then I can just tell you what you have to do."

"No, I think I'd like you to show me, if you don't mind," Shara said. Watching as Slade reached into the cage and laid his hand on the gull's unbandaged wing, Shara wondered what he was doing. As Slade pulled his hand back out of the cage, he motioned for Shara to do the same.

Shara stepped forward, having backstepped so that Slade could have better access to the cage and the gull inside. Putting her hand inside the cage, Shara rested her fingertips on the gull's wing. Then, realizing that she still didn't really know what to do, Shara turned back to Slade.

"Okay, so what do I do now?"

Slade at first looked confused, then seemed to remember at last that he hadn't really _explained_ anything to her. "Oh! Sorry Shara, what you do is you concentrate on the gull. Close your eyes, and form a picture of it in your mind."

Shara did so, feeling a little strange and silly. But as she focussed on the bird, Shara began to feel a strange tingling moving up her arm from her hand. Not unlike when she had first received the morphing power, but this sensation was different somehow. Once she opened her eyes, Shara felt the same as she always had, and yet different in some undeniable way.


	8. The thrill of flight

"Okay, so what's next?"

Slade thought for a minute, remembering what Cassie had done for him after he had been given the morphing power. Then, just as Shara looked like she was about to ask again, Slade decided that he would take her to The Gardens, just like Cassie had done with him. _But this time, I have to remember that Shara doesn't know what I know, at least not yet._

"I think we should take a trip to The Gardens, see if we can get you a good combat morph."

"The Gardens?" Shara asked, remembering the times she and her former family would go there to look at all the animals. Her favorites, and Ness' too, had been the large cats. But Shara had also been fond of the butterfly room, and the exotic birds. "Why do you want to go there, Slade?"

"I already told you," Slade said kindly. "We're going to go there to get you a morph that can fight."

"Right. This is all so new to me, I guess what you said kind of slipped my mind," Shara rubbed the back of her neck, feeling a little sheepish. "So, how are we going to get there?"

"Fly," Slade said, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world. Shara's incredulous look reminded him again that what was completely commonplace for him was still really out of the ordinary for her. "Sorry. I guess have to I keep reminding myself that you haven't been doing this for very long."

"Yeah, you keep working on that, Slade," Shara grinned, as if she found the whole thing funny. "So, what do we do first?"

"Well, first we have to concentrate on the seagull. Form a picture of it in your mind, and focus on that. When we're done with that, I'll tell you what to do next."

"Are you sure you're going to remember this time?" Shara chuckled.

"Yes, I'm sure I'm going to remember this time," Slade retorted, grinning at Shara's good natured ribbing. It was strange, but Slade felt like this was all familiar to him. And, for some reason, when Shara made a joke it wasn't annoying the way it was when Marco did.

"Well then, let's get going, shall we?"

"Okay, just focus on the gull, follow my lead," Slade said, then realized that the last part of what he had just said didn't make much sense. "Okay, scratch that last part."

Slade closed his eyes, concentrating on the bird that he had just acquired. He counted on the fact that Shara was doing the same thing. When he began to hear and feel his bones crunching and twisting into new configurations, Slade listened hard to make sure he wasn't the only one morphing. He wasn't.

As Slade had started morphing before her, it wasn't surprising that he finished before Shara. What would have been surprising to any of the other Animorphs, had they been there, was the fact that Shara had finished morphing just a few seconds after Slade had. Soon, two seagulls stood where a pair of humans had been.

__

(Wow, this is really different,) Shara said, peering around at all the cages that seemed huge from her new height.

__

(Yeah, really,) Slade said. _(Why don't we get going now?)_

(Okay, let's do that,) Shara laughed.

The two seagulls ran out of the barn, flapping their wings to lift themselves into the air. Flapping hard and circling the barn, Slade and Shara rose into the sky. Slade, despite having been to The Gardens just once as far as he knew, was guided by a mix of subconscious memories and his own photographic recall.

It was somewhat of a novel experience for Slade to know exactly where he was going, since he always seemed to be needing someone to lead him to where they wanted him to go. It wasn't really something Slade would let himself think about for long, but it _was _nice not to have to impose on his allies.

__

(Shara, are you still with me?)

(Yeah, I'm right with you, Slade.)

(Good.)

After that exchange and reassurance, Slade and Shara flew on in silence.

….

Shara wondered what was going to happen once she arrived at The Gardens. Slade had said something about getting her a morph that could fight. Shara wasn't sure what he had meant by that, but Slade did seem to still have the protectiveness toward her that Ness had had when he was still with her. So Shara decided that she would trust the boy who had once been her brother.

As they flew, Shara found it odd that there seemed to be another presence in with her mind. Separate from her own mind, but somehow not unreachable. Shara wondered what it could possibly be. Probing at the edges of the new mind with her telepathic powers, Shara was a bit surprised to find out that the new mind that was sharing space with her own belonged to the seagull itself. _Slade didn't tell me about anything like this,_ Shara thought to herself. _I wonder why?_

Then, Shara realized that it must have just been because Slade was so much more used to morphing than she was. It was probably the most mundane of things to him, to have an animal mind cohabitate with his own. So that was no doubt why Slade hadn't mentioned anything about it to her.

As they flew on, Shara couldn't help but notice how the seagull mind in with her own mind kept pointing out various bits of garbage on the street. The most distracting part for Shara was the fact that the seagull wanted nothing more than to stop, land, and feast on these various bits of detritus. After enduring four minutes of these kinds of thoughts, the novelty wore off and Shara used her telepathic power to separate the seagull's mind from her own.

__

(Shara?)

(What is it, Slade?)

(We're almost there, so get ready to land. Okay?)

(All right, Slade,) Shara acknowledged, as her brother's voice faded from her mind.

It was still a strange experience for Shara, to be flying under her own power like this. But at the same time, somewhere in the back of her mind, in a place that she was sure had never existed before, Shara felt perfectly comfortable with the activity.

When they were finally over The Gardens' airspace, Slade set about finding a good place for them to land. Preferably in the same kind of dark, empty, secluded spot that Cassie had found when _she_ had first taken him to The Gardens. After a bit of searching, Slade found a place that was far enough out of the way that no one was likely to look there at all.

Somewhat ironically, this was the exact place that he and Cassie had landed in when Cassie had brought Slade to get his panther morph.

__

(All right Shara, I've found a good place,) Slade informed his maybe-sister. _(Now if you'll just follow me down, we can get this done.)_

(Anywhere you go, I'll follow you down,) Shara singsonged.

__

(What was that?) Slade asked, having had a brief flash of recognition. _There's something about that song…_

(Gin Blossoms,) Shara laughed. _(Sorry, I just couldn't resist.)_

(Yeah well, let's just get this done, okay?) Slade asked, folding his wings and falling though the air in a dive.

(Right behind you, Slade,) Shara called out cheerfully, mimicking Slade's actions. Shara thought diving was fun, and made a mental note to try some more of it when she had the time.


	9. Invisible Infiltration

As the ground rushed up at the two of them, Slade waited until the absolute last possible moment before he pulled out of his dive. More for the thrill of it than anything else. Shara, not being as much of an adrenaline-junkie as her brother, pulled out a little sooner. Once they were both back on solid ground, Shara noticed that they were standing behind a pair of rather large Dumpsters.

Shara was just grateful that she couldn't smell it at the moment. And also for the fact that she had blocked out the seagull's thoughts from her own mind. With all the garbage just a few feet away, Shara was certain that the seagull would be having a grand old time. Laughing internally, Shara started to demorph.

She also saw that Slade was starting to demorph himself. Shara looked away before the morph could get too strange. Shara had watched her brother morph _into_ the seagull in the first place, and she had no real desire to see it happen in reverse. It was one thing to watch a computerized effect, or to see something like it animated.

But, to watch someone you knew and cared about go though a transformation that wouldn't be at all out of place in a horror movie, it was just a little too much for Shara to deal with right now. Feeling the changes happening to her own body was strange enough. Once she was finished demorphing, Shara started to walk out from behind the Dumpster.

That was when Shara noticed that she had the same problem as when she had first woken up in the barn with Slade. _Okay, so now at least I know I'm not going to be able to take any clothes with me when I morph,_ she thought with an inward laugh.

"Well, now that we're here, we might as well go try to get you a good fighting morph," Slade said.

"Oh yeah," Shara shot back, sarcasm lacing her words. "So, we're both just going to walk around this very, _very_ public place completely nak-" Shara turned and looked at her brother for the first time since she had demorphed. _Oh, that is _so_ not fair._

Slade, meanwhile, was looking out over the walkways that made up most of this part of The Gardens. There didn't seem to be anyone near enough to see them, and if he was careful enough he might be able to get to where he wanted to go without them finding out about Shara. Turning at last to speak to his sister, Slade saw that she was giving him a look of incredulous envy.

"So, you care to tell me how _you_ ended up wearing those clothes, while I got stuck standing here in my birthday suit?" Shara asked, raising an eyebrow in her brother's direction.

__

I had a feeling that there was still something I didn't remember, Slade thought ruefully to himself. "Uh, I might have forgotten to tell you something."

"You _think_?" Shara smirked at her brother.

Slade offered his sister a one-shouldered shrug, and Shara shook her head while trying valiantly not to laugh. The situation really _was_ a funny one, at least to the two of them, since they hadn't been in the Animorphs long enough to really appreciate the danger they could be in.

After making sure that there was no one close enough to see them, Slade and Shara both turned themselves invisible. Once they were both sure that no one would be able to follow them, both Slade and Shara set off to find Shara a combat morph. Since Slade remembered the interior of The Gardens better than Shara, he elected to lead the way.

Shara was more than happy to follow her brother, since she was still getting used to being completely colorblind. All her other senses seemed to be working fine, better than ever in fact. Since she hadn't been given much time to adjust to her rebuilt body and new senses, Shara wondered if this was because she was currently invisible, or if her senses had been boosted as well.

It was a strange thing to have to think about, but Shara was starting to adapt to the fact that her life from now on would not fit anyone's definition of normal anymore. Being a naturally resilient person, Shara felt that it wouldn't take her as long to get used to her new life as it might have taken someone else.

__

Now, if I could just have a few minutes to sit down and think about this, that would be good. Somehow though, Shara got the feeling that a few minutes – or any time at all, for that matter – to sit down and think over her new situation would be something of a luxury. Shara followed her brother as he made his way into the labyrinthine interior of The Gardens.


	10. Cats and Birds

Shara didn't know just _how_ Slade was going to find his way though the winding maze of mildly dank corridors, but she was willing to trust her brother. After they had gone though enough twists and turns to make Shara certain that she wouldn't be able to find her way back out without Slade to help her, they finally made it to what Shara got the feeling was their destination.

__

(We're here,) Slade said.

__

(Great. Where's here?)

(This is where I got my first combat morph,) Slade said, gesturing to the doors that they were now standing in front of.

Shara was a little surprised to note that she could still see Slade, though she got the feeling that no one else would be able to see either of them. Shara figured that the reason she could still see Slade, and herself when she had held up her right arm to check, was that she was also able to turn invisible at will.

__

(So, what was your first combat morph?)

(Black panther,) Slade answered easily.

__

(Oh.) Unseen, Shara smiled. He may have been changed beyond casual recognition, but under it all Slade was still her brother.

__

(Okay, so what do you want to have?)

(Well, what's here?) Shara asked practically.

Slade tilted his head, seeming to be trying to recall just what was behind the doors that they now stood in front of. _(Cassie told me that this is where they keep the big cats. I just thought that you might want to get yours from the same place that I got mine. You seem like that kind of person.)_

Changed or not, he's still my brother, Shara thought, smiling. _(I think I would like that, thanks. What do they have here, besides the panther that you got?)_

(Lots of things,) Slade said, pointing to a door that had P-203 written on it in stenciled black letters. _(They have a bunch of tigers behind that door, or so Cassie tells me. Besides, Jake uses a tiger for his combat morph.)_

(Oh, that's interesting.) Shara considered for a moment. _(Why is that so important?)_

(Well, I just thought that you might want to get a different kind of combat morph than Jake. I know I did, anyway. But, if you really want to have a tiger, I could help you get one,) Slade said.

Shara thought about her brother's offer. _(Thanks for thinking of that, Slade. I guess it _would_ be pretty strange if we all had the same morph,)_ she laughed silently._ (How could you tell who was who?)_

(Yeah, that's just what I was thinking,) Slade laughed, too.

As they moved away from the door marked P-203, Shara again wished she had been able to bring along some clothes. And again she wondered just how her brother had managed to do just that. Once they stood in front of a door marked P-205, Slade started to speak again.

__

(Cassie said that there were some leopards behind this door.)

(Leopards? Really?) Shara grinned. Leopards had always been her favorite kind of big cat. _(Well, since you already took my first choice, I guess I'll go with this one,)_ Shara teased, ribbing her big brother the way she had always done.

Slade, however, didn't know Shara well enough to know that she was just kidding around with him. _(I'm sorry, Shara. I didn't know that you would want one of the panthers.)_

Shara shook her head, sighing. Apparently some things _had_ changed. _(It's okay, Slade. You didn't know that I would be coming along. and anyway, I was only kidding.)_

(You were?)

(Yeah. I do that a lot,) Shara said.

__

(Oh.)

It was obvious to Shara that Slade didn't know just how to react to the new information that she had just presented to him. _(Just forget I said anything, okay? It's not really that important.)_

(If you say so, Shara.)

Standing behind him as she was, Shara saw Slade shrug. A second later, he had opened the door to the leopard habitat. As they made their way into the habitat itself, Shara couldn't help wondering what they were going to do when they actually _found_ one of the leopards. Sure, Shara did feel a lot stronger than she ever had in her life, but there was still the fact that they were about to go up against a vicious jungle cat with nothing but their own bodies to protect them.

__

This is going to get ugly, really ugly. I just hope Slade knows what he's doing, because I sure don't. Breathing deeply to try and steady her nerves, Shara continued to follow her brother into the leopard habitat. The grass felt cool and soft under her feet, and it was a welcome relief after the hard concrete. Moving deeper into the leopards' habitat, Shara had to wonder just when the leopards themselves were going to show up.

That was when she spotted one; an adult male that was lounging under the shade of a tree.

__

(That's probably the easiest mark we're going to find,) Shara said, pointing to the resting leopard.

__

(Probably is,) Slade allowed. _(Do you want my help catching it, or would you like to handle this alone?)_

(I can probably do this without your help,) Shara said, wanting to test the limits of her newly enhanced body. _(But, if I do end up needing help, I'll know who to call.)_

(All right, that's good. I'll wait for you here.)

(You do that,) Shara nodded.

Once the exchange was over, Shara hurried over to where the leopard was resting. The leopard lifted its head, catching Shara's scent even though no one but another Teknoman would have been able to see her. Climbing back to its four feet, the leopard waited for this new creature to make a move. He didn't have very long to wait.

Shara, taking another deep breath to steady herself and prepare for what she was about to do, jumped over one of the large bushes that stood in her way and moved to confront the leopard. The leopard, by now, was getting a little bit agitated. Before the cat could make up its mind about what to do, Shara had lunged forward and placed her hand on its head.

Blocking out all external distractions as she had been taught to do, Shara focussed with all her mind on the leopard that she was going to acquire. It was a strange sensation, not made any less so by the fact that Shara had already done it once before. Once she was sure she had fully absorbed the DNA of the leopard, though Shara didn't know exactly how she knew this, she took her hand off the leopard's head and stepped back.

Walking quickly away from the leopard before he could make up his mind to chase her, Shara made it back to where Slade was waiting for her.

__

(You done already?)

(Yeah, I am.)

(Well, that didn't take very long,) Slade said appreciatively. _(Let's head back out.)_

(Right behind you, Slade,) Shara said happily.

The two siblings made their way back out of the interior of The Gardens, skirting around the security patrols that they encountered. Slade couldn't help thinking of how much easier his first trip into The Gardens would have been if he had known about this power that he had. But that was the past, and there was no changing it.

As the siblings made their way out of the hallways at last, Slade looked again for a good place to hide them as they morphed, since he got the feeling that they wouldn't be able to stay invisible while they morphed. Ducking behind another Dumpster, Slade willed himself to fade slowly back into visibility. Sensing that Shara was doing the same, Slade turned to look at his sister.

__

(We should start morphing again,) he said.

__

(You're right,) Shara said calmly.

Before she had finished her sentence, Shara had started morphing again. Slade was just behind her in starting his own morph. Once all of the physical and mental changes were complete, Slade and Shara flew off into the sky. Shara let Slade lead her back to that barn she had woken up in.

It wasn't home for her yet, but given enough time it just might become that way.


	11. Irresponsibility

It was originally Cassie's idea, which was strange enough in and of itself since Cassie normally wouldn't be one to condone a mission like this, much less plan one out. But, this was a case where Cassie's concern for animals somewhat overrode her better judgment.

They had all gone to the new Mega Mall that had been recently built, the one across town from where almost all of them lived. Cassie, naturally, had been the first one to notice that the parrots in the Rain Forest Café were real. And, just like anyone who knew her well enough would expect, Cassie was immediately upset about how the birds were being treated.

They were in fact the subject of a great deal of teasing and annoyance, but no outright abuse as of yet. Cassie, however, wasn't one to wait until the situation degraded that far to act.

"Squuaaaakk! The food is good! The food is good! Squuuaaaakk!"

The first time Cassie had heard that, she had thought that it might be some kind of a recording. Or at the very least one of those toy parrots that could be programmed to say a bunch of different things. Cassie wouldn't have minded that, in fact she thought that some of them were kind of cute.

But these hadn't been merely clever recordings, or even those stuffed-animal looking talking toy parrots. These had been live parrots. Live parrots, who had minds and feelings of their own. Live parrots, who should never have been used as living props for this kind of place.

When Cassie had seen that she had immediately turned and asked the person standing next to her, who had happened to be Marco, what they could do to help the poor birds. After all, no animal deserved to be abused and humiliated like that.

Marco had gotten one of his famous 'thoughtful' looks, and that alone should have let Cassie know that the plan that he was about to hatch would be strange, audacious, and more than a little dangerous. But, this time, Cassie was willing to take a few risks. Such were the strength of her convictions.

At last, Marco had smiled, and said: "Parrots, right? They talk don't they?"

At Cassie's confirming nod, Marco's grin had only grown wider. When she had asked him if he had a plan, Marco had nodded and said that he _definitely_ had a plan.

That was how four of the Animorphs ended up standing in front of the Amazon Café, just two days after that fateful conversation. The four of them were standing almost among the people that were taunting the parrots. One of the patrons was the epitome of the 'surfer dude' stereotype.

"Say 'Howard Stern rules'," he urged the bright green parrot sitting on a perch next to his bench.

"Squuaaaakk! Amazon Café! It's an adventure!"

"No, idiot bird dude," he said, sounding annoyed. "'Howard Stern Rules' man! Say 'Howard Stern rules!'"

"Moron," Rachel spat, looking at the boy as if he was something she had scrapped off her shoe.

"Yeah," he said turning to Rachel, not suspecting that she was talking about him and not to him. "This bird is a total moron."

"I wasn't talking about the bird, you little--"

Jake put his hand on Rachel's shoulder, silently urging her to keep her temper. Rachel normally had good control over her emotions, but she had always had slight problems when it came to dealing with anger. And she had never made it much of a secret that she had a strong aversion to stupid people.

"Okay, let's get this done," Jake said, getting the attention of all the Animorphs present. "Cassie, are you absolutely sure that they always clean the parrot perches now?"

"Yes, Jake. I am," Cassie said. "In fact, the woman who cleans them is coming this way now."

All four of them looked forward, and indeed there was a woman in a waitress uniform coming toward them. She looked like she was about twenty, and there was really nothing remarkable about her. In her right hand she held the handle of a large wire cage. It looked just the right size to hold the four parrots.

"Squuaaaakk! Pot stickers! Pot stickers! Squuaaaakk!"

"Okay, just so we're clear," Jake said, looking around at the other Animorphs as Tobias and Ax came over to join them. "Rachel, Marco, Cassie and I will follow her into the back room. Tobias and Ax, you two will stay behind as our backup, in case we have some trouble."

"Backup," Aximili repeated. "Ba-kup. Bakkup. Look! Is that the place where cinnamon buns are created? Oh, cinnamon buns. Bunzuh."

"Maybe after we're done here we can go to Cinnabon," Jake said, in the manner of one who was speaking to an insane person. Then he sighed, Ax would never change.

"Okay, she's going," Cassie said, drawing the attention of the other Animorphs.

Tobias quickly wished his friends good luck, before dragging Ax over to one of the benches that bordered the waiting area. The remaining Animorphs followed the woman, who had by now finished putting all four parrots into the cage that she was carrying. The four Animorphs were quiet for the most part, but Marco was humming the theme music to Mission: Impossible.

"Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is simple: Give the parrots back their dignity and strike a blow for Mommy Earth!" Marco said in a faux-announcer voice.

Cassie rolled her eyes at Marco's antics, and Jake hid a smile behind his hand.

"You know," Marco said, trying to sound thoughtful. "I really can't believe that you're even going along with this, Jake. Responsible, down-to-earth Jake, giving his okay to a completely, totally personal use of our powers. It's because he really likes Cassie," Marco said this last part in a stage-whisper, making sure that all his friends would be able to hear.

"It's because I knew that if I didn't say yes, Cassie would have done it anyway. And then she'd have gotten Rachel, and probably you, to go along with her. And I knew that the three of you would need… someone sensible to come with you."

"Sure we did, _Dad_," Marco mocked gently.

Jake growled softly deep in his throat, the sound he usually made when someone or something was bugging him. Marco, who had had a lot of experience with reading Jake's moods, knew that his best friend was just kidding around. They stayed far enough away from the woman carrying the cages that they would be able to quickly break off and pretend that they were doing something else if she happened to turn around.

When she entered a doorway that led into a storage room, the four of them waited until they saw her come out again before they walked in. All the while, Marco was still humming.

"Have I mentioned shut up yet, Marco?" Rachel asked in a conversational tone.

Marco only grinned at her.

"Okay, come on you guys," Cassie said, eager to get on with their mission.

Once they were all inside the storage room, Cassie quickly went over to the parrot cage and opened it. Taking out the parrots one at a time, Cassie handed them to her friends. As they all focused on acquiring the DNA of their respective birds, the parrots became still and calm the way most animals did during the process of acquiring.

Once that task was over and done with, the Animorphs stored the parrots in a well-ventilated cupboard. Cassie had been the one to find the thing, and so it was a very safe assumption that she would approve of putting the birds there. Then, all that remained was for them to morph into the parrots. This they did at varying speeds.

Cassie was the fastest, a fact that all of the Animorphs had come to accept. Jake and the rest of the Animorphs all lagged behind to varying degrees, with Marco being the last one to complete his change.

(Well, aren't we colorful,) Marco said.

(We'd better get into the cage quick, before that woman comes back,) Cassie suggested.

Once the Animorphs were inside the cage and had had a minute to get used to their new parrot bodies, they were all surprised to discover that the minds that came with the bodies weren't at all the norm for any of the animals they had morphed. In fact, the minds of the parrots were more akin to the minds of the dolphins that they had all morphed.

For Marco, there were other similarities. He found that the parrot mind was almost exactly like the mind of the gorilla he used as his primary combat morph. It was smart enough to think for itself, to form the concept of a past and a future.

(Hey, these birds are smart,) Marco was indignant, and just starting to realize why Cassie had wanted to free them.

(Very smart. Too smart to have to be stuck out on a crappy old perch and have people pestering them all day,) Cassie said. (These parrots all belong in the rain forest, not in a mall being used as expensive props.)

(Not that we can really go around freeing all the parrots who live in captivity,) Jake said, keeping the practicalities of the situation in mind. (You do realize that, right Cassie?)

(Jake, we all know that,) Marco said, a smirk evident in his tone. (But we can still make the Amazon Café wish that they had never heard of parrots.)

Waiting for a few minutes, the Animorphs were relieved when another woman came into the room where they were being kept. They felt a slight jolt as she picked the cage up, and there was the expected sensation of movement as she carried it back out. Once they were all back out at the waiting area, there was a slight pressure on their bodies as the woman unloaded them from the cage back onto the perch.

Then, there was just the small matter of figuring out how to make their parrot morphs talk. That was something that the Animorphs did in a very short time. It wasn't all that much like speaking when they were in their human forms, since parrots had no lips. It was more akin to a ventriloquist act, in that all the sounds they wanted to make had to be formed in their throats.

(Ah, so many people, so little time to insult them all,) Marco commented, looking out over the vast sea of people who were waiting to be seated.

"Squuaaaakk! Amazon burgers are made with cat meat! Squuaaaakk!" Marco said.

"Squuaaaakk! Try our spaghetti with hair!" Rachel added.

"Squuaaaakk! Amazon Café nachos and toe jam!" Jake said, laughing inwardly.

Tobias, over at an empty table that he had claimed for himself and Ax, also laughed quietly at the antics of his friends. It was nice to watch them use their powers for something other than fighting the Yeerks and saving the world. Tobias was also happy that Ax had managed to convince someone to let him have some of their pizza without having to resort to craziness.

He still wondered what Slade would have done if _he_ had been included on this mission. _Probably whatever Jake told him to do,_ Tobias mused. Slade did tend to be very willing to do what Jake said, anytime and anywhere without asking questions. It was kind of strange as far as Tobias was concerned, almost like having another Ax in the group. But at least Slade didn't call Jake "Prince Jake" all the time.

And, he wasn't anywhere near as arrogant as Ax could be sometimes. Having Slade with them on missions also gave them more of an advantage in numbers, which they really needed since the Yeerks had so many more soldiers than they did. But still, no one could dispute the fact that Slade was a strange guy.

With that thought, Tobias sat back in his chair to watch the rest of the performance. It was sure to be interesting, if nothing else.

"Squuaaaakk! Botulism! Food poisoning!" Rachel crowed.

"Squuaaaakk! Enjoy the fried booger strips!" Marco said, laughing to himself.

Tobias had to work to swallow a chuckle, as all of the people who had been waiting for seats at the Amazon Café suddenly decided that they would rather go eat somewhere else. Tobias couldn't imagine why. It was only when the people who were actually sitting _inside_ the Café began to get up and leave that the manager decided to come out and do something about the situation.

He was an older man, and even human eyes could tell the difference between his real hair and the rug that he wore.

"Squuaaaakk! By the way, is that your nose or are you eating a banana?" Marco asked.

"Squuaaaakk! What's that on your head, a wombat?" Rachel jibbed.

"Squuaaaakk! It's a toupee! It's a toupee! Squuaaaakk!" Jake mocked.

"Squuaaaakk! We should be flying free in our native habitat!"

Marco thought that what Cassie had just said was a little out of character for a parrot, even with how smart Marco now knew they were. Looking back over to the table where Tobias and Ax were sitting, Marco could see Tobias laughing and clapping softly. After that, the woman who had cleaned the perches and unknowingly allowed the Animorphs to carry out their prank, came back and took them into the storage room that they had all started out in.

Once the Animorphs had all demorphed and gotten back into their normal clothes, they placed the real parrots back in the cage. Marco was the one to peer out and make sure no one was close enough to see them when they left the room. It was clear, so Marco beckoned the rest of the Animorphs forward.

"Did you see the look on that guy's face when we all started talking to him?" Marco crowed once all of the Animorphs were safely outside the storage room. "That was priceless! Though I think you might have gone a little overboard on the environmentalism there, Cassie."

"I just said what I thought needed saying, that's all," Cassie said.

"Still, 'we should be flying free in our native habitat'? Did you think you were on Captain Planet?" Marco paused. "If you tell me you like that show, Cass, I'll lose all respect for you."

"I didn't know you _had_ any respect for me in the first place, Marco," Cassie said, smirking at his expression. "But no, Captain

Planet was never really my favorite."

"Good. I would have said it _sucked_, but that's just me," Marco said.


	12. An unfortunate meeting

They were making their way to Tobias and Ax's table, with Marco feeling as if he could take on anyone in the world. But when his eyes caught on a particular person in the crowd, a fair distance behind Tobias but in the same general space, Marco didn't feel quite so pumped-up anymore. In fact, he felt a little sick.

It was Erek. Erek the Chee. One of the Animorphs' greatest and strangest allies in the battle against the Yeerks. Not a hard-core warrior like Slade, hell Erek couldn't even fight for himself if it came down to it. About the only thing he was useful for was information-gathering. But then again, he was _incredibly_ useful when it came to that one thing.

And so, Marco figured that he could put up with Erek for the useful information that he and the other Chee could gather on the Yeerks. But the inevitable downside of being a spy was the fact that you often ended up being the bearer of bad news. Marco had even come to expect mostly bad news from the Chee.

Looking at the expression on Erek's face, Marco didn't know exactly what to expect from him, but he had a feeling that his opinion about Erek wasn't going to have to be revised anytime soon. Marco and Jake separated from the other Animorphs so as not to draw attention to their group, and Marco saw Erek nod slightly. The two of them walked over to meet with Erek while still trying not to be too obvious about it.

"Hi, Marco," Erek greeted. "Hello, Jake."

"Hi Erek. How's it going?" Jake asked warily, as both Animorphs nodded respectfully to the Chee.

They had both been present for the battle at the Matcom corporation; the one and only time that Erek had been freed to be the unstoppable warrior that he was capable of being when not constrained by his own pacifist programming. They could still remember the stink of the blood that had been coating the walls, floor and ceiling once Erek had been done.

Come to think of it, Tobias had said that Slade had done a fair amount of damage – and taken it as well – when he had been under that mind control. Marco sometimes wondered just who would win if the two of them were ever forced to fight. Of course Erek would need to have his pacifist programming disabled again, otherwise Slade would probably pound and/or shred him into scrap metal.

"Fine. And we've heard, through our sources, that you have been doing good work against our… mutual acquaintances," Erek lowered his voice to the point where a normal person would have a fairly hard time overhearing. "I think we should have some privacy for this."

The air around the three of them shimmered, and when Marco and Jake were finally able to see him clearly again, Erek had reverted to his normal form. Something that that looked like an odd, metallic greyhound that was able to walk on its hind legs.

"What did you do?" Marco asked.

"I extended my hologram to cover the three of us and some of the surrounding area," Erek said. "Anyone who walks by now will see a group of security guards standing around talking. No one will bother or overhear us."

Marco thought that what Erek had done, while being an extremely cool trick on the android's part, did not bode well for what he was going to say to them. It had to be something very important for Erek to resort to these kinds of drastic measures. And in this line of work, _important_ was usually synonymous with _bad_.

"The work you did rescuing the two free Hork-Bajir was a very commendable thing," Erek said. "Those two may be the foundation of something very good in the future. You six may have begun the salvation of an entire race."

"Well, we do like to keep busy," Marco said offhandedly. "And it's either try to save entire races or sit at home and play Nintendo."

Erek laughed, an odd sight considering his current canine form, then he became serious again. "Marco, I need to speak with you privately."


	13. Information and Action

"Well, I don't have any secrets from Jake. I think that's the basis of a good marriage: openness and honesty," Marco said, grinning.

"This information concerns someone who was once very close to you, Marco," Erek said seriously, almost sadly.

Marco's grin evaporated like mist in the hot sun. "My mom?"

Erek turned to Jake, a questioning expression on his canine face.

"It's okay," Jake said calmly. "I know. I'm the only one who knows."

Erek nodded, then started to say what he had come to say. "Marco, your mother has returned to Earth. She is currently overseeing a very secret new project that's being run from Royan Island. Or, to be more precise, it's being run from the waters _around_ Royan Island."

Erek looked at Marco, to see how the Animorph was taking this new information. But Marco's thoughts were still back on what Erek had first said; the part about his mother having returned to Earth. Jake understood this, of course, and took over the conversation while Marco got his head on straight.

"What are they all doing out there in the ocean?" Jake asked.

"We don't know as of yet. But we do know that such a project would have to be both big and important before Visser One herself would want to oversee it, or else be assigned to do so," Erek stated.

"Visser Three can't be very happy about that," Jake observed.

"Visser Three is not one of Visser One's favorite Yeerks, and likewise Visser One is not very well-liked by Visser Three," Erek concurred.

"That's true."

"Look, I… wasn't sure how either of you would react to this development," Erek said uncertainly. "But I felt that Marco at least had a right to know that his mother had returned to Earth. You two have to be clear about one thing, though: Visser One did not ascend to the second-highest rank in the Yeerk Empire by being nice. She is both brilliant and dangerous."

Both of them turned a not-very-discreet look on Marco after Erek had made that statement.

"What?" Marco demanded hotly, aggravated about being treated like an invalid. "You both think I don't know what Visser One is like? And I've been part of this war for _how_ long now?"

"I know that you have had previous experiences with Visser One, Marco," Erek said, trying to be diplomatic. "Please don't think I'm trying to dismiss you. But you humans tend to judge others based on their faces and eyes, being easily fooled by outer appearances. The face of Visser One is that of someone you know. Someone you still care about. And if you participate in this mission, you may very well end up coming up against Visser One directly."

"And you don't think I can handle it, right? Thanks for having so much faith in me, you two; I'm really touched," Marco sneered.

"It's not that we don't have faith in you," Erek rushed to reassure the Animorph. "Jake and I both know how dedicated you are to this battle. However, the fact remains that you love your mother and want more than anything to rescue her. That could cause you to make mistakes that you otherwise would not make."

Marco gritted his teeth, firmly shelving his urge to hit Erek the Chee. The android would have just let him, and all that that would have accomplished would have been Marco hurting his hand.

"There is one other thing that we have found out during our surveillance. We have discovered that the Yeerks are in possession of a new species of Controller; a species that we believe are called Leerans."

"Thank you for all the information, Erek," Jake said calmly, as Marco fumed.

"Is he going to be all right?" Erek asked, indicating Marco.

Not waiting to hear Jake's answer, whatever it was going to be, Marco stalked off to be by himself. He barely noticed the woman gaping at him as he stepped out of Erek's hologram. After Erek and Jake were done speaking, Marco saw Jake walking back up to him.

"Erek didn't mean anything against you by what he said back there. He just wanted to know if-"

"I _know_ what he wanted to know, all right?" Marco snapped. "He wanted to know that if I would kill my own mother if she ended up in a position to endanger the mission."

"And would you?" Jake asked carefully.

"I'm not sure right now," Marco said, turning away.

Jake nodded, knowing what Marco was trying to say. He had his own share of troubles when it came to dealing with family members who had become Controllers. Tom was proof enough of that. Jake sighed, as he and Marco started walking out of the mall. Neither of them really felt like looking around anymore, not after what they had just been told.

Both of them knew that there was probably no way that they would be able to avoid sharing this new information with the others, but Marco was still going to try. Jake knew that Marco would want to try, at least for the sake of his own pride. Sighing, Jake continued to make his way through the mall. He needed to call his dad, and he needed to get home.

For a moment Jake considered inviting Marco to come over to his house, then reconsidered since he knew that Marco would want to be alone right now.

XXX

As for Marco himself, he was just happy that Jake hadn't tried to talk to him into going with him on his way home. He hadn't quite been sure that he would have been able to deal with Jake trying to talk to him about his mother; trying to reassure him that things were going to be okay. Things were _not_ okay, and there was very little chance that they were ever going to be okay again.

Deciding not to think about that anymore, Marco turned and left the mall. He knew that they were going to meet up at Cassie's barn – what had been unofficially decided to be their headquarters – to discuss what Erek and the other Chee had found out. He knew there wasn't any way to avoid it; but all the same, Marco found himself hoping that the inevitable meeting could be put off.

Just for a little while.

Making his way back home, Marco considered just morphing into the Osprey that he had acquired so long ago and just flying away from all his troubles. Flying had always been a good way for any of the Animorphs to forget whatever troubles they were feeling; Marco was just the same as any of the others in that respect, he loved flying.

But at the moment he wanted to think, to mull over what Erek had said and consider how it would affect him. How he would _let_ it affect him. And yeah, maybe do a little wallowing too. Flying, the sheer thrill of it, wasn't really conductive to wallowing in one's own self-pity. Walking was really more suited to that kind of thing.

Marco felt entitled to a little wallowing at least; after all, it was _his_ mother that they were going to be facing at Royan Island, or the waters around same, once the Animorphs got there to carry out their mission. It was _his_ mother who was going to be overseeing the project. So, as far as Marco was concerned, a little wallowing was perfectly in order.

And then after that, maybe a little moping.

Looking up at the sky, pretending he could see the cold darkness of space beyond that blue barrier, Marco wondered just where his mother was at this very moment. Was she on the Yeerk mothership, trading barbs and other unpleasantries with their mutual nemesis Visser Three? Or, was she down in the waters around Royan Island, planning the next stages of whatever project it was that had brought her back to Earth in the first place?

Whatever the case was, he was going to be finding out more about that project soon. When he and the rest of the Animorphs showed up to shut it down. Sighing softly, Marco continued walking.


	14. Returns and Recognition

The school day had passed with the accustomed slowness, and Jake was glad to have had so much time to spend with Cassie during lunch. Even if some of it was spent talking about the new mission and the information that Erek had given them. Anything that pertained to Marco's secret was left out, of course.

Jake wasn't the type to betray a friend that way, even if Cassie probably _was_ the best person to help him with his problems.

Once the day was over, the six of them met back at the barn to discuss their plan of action. And to let Slade know what it was that they would be doing soon.

"Cassie, can you get Slade? We'll need his vote on this mission, too," Jake said, even though he suspected he knew what the older boy's response would be.

(I'll bring Ax here; we'll need the information he might have on these new Controllers the Yeerks are using.)

"Thanks, Tobias," Jake called to the hawk as he flew away.

Walking into the barn, Jake looked up just as Cassie scrambled down the ladder. From her posture and stride, Jake could tell she was worried about something.

"Jake, there's someone in the hayloft," she said, looking back over her shoulder the way she'd come. "I think you should come see them."

"I thought we already agreed that Slade was going to stay in your hayloft, Cass," he said, as he started to climb the ladder up toward the hayloft.

Up to where the Animorphs' seventh member lived. What Jake saw wasn't what he had been expecting. Slade was there, like he always was, but there was also a younger-looking blond person – wearing what looked very much like one of Cassie's outfits – laying down with their head on his chest. Jake didn't know what to make of the situation; Slade wasn't the type of person who would just go and blithely endanger the Animorphs' security like this, but then that seemed to be exactly what he had just done.

"Slade?" he called softly, not wanting to wake this new person if he could help it.

As it turned out, though, they were either a particularly light sleeper or they had the same kind of enhanced senses as Slade himself did. Sitting up, and incidentally revealing themselves to be a girl at the same time, she rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. Making a concerted effort to keep his eyes away from the loose folds of Cassie's shirt draped across her chest, Jake focused on her face.

She was kind of pretty, and in a way she reminded him of his cousin Rachel. This new girl had the same blonde hair and pale, flawless complexion, but those were the only similarities that Jake could pick out at the moment. Time would tell if this new girl was really anything like Rachel or if they just bore an uncanny physical resemblance.

"Hi," Jake said, crouching down so he could look the new girl in the eyes. She might have been someone important to Slade; he was pretty sure the older boy would have been wary of any other person who came into the barn.

He seemed like the kind of person who would take any threat to them or himself very seriously. Maybe a little too seriously.

"Who're you? What're you doing here?"

"I was about to ask you those very same questions," he said soberly. "You're clearly not one of us, so who are you? How did you get here?"

"What do you mean, 'one of you'? Just who are you people?"

"I think you should be the one to start first," he said, trying to sound reasonable.

"Why don't we start with how you know my brother, and work from there?" she said, sitting up and folding her arms.

"Slade's your brother?" he asked, pausing to think on what that could mean. "Wait, you're not Shara Carter, are you?"

"Good guess; but how do you know me when I know we've never met before?"

"I don't really _know_ you," he rushed to reassure her; Shara looked like she was getting impatient. "It's more like I know of you. Your brother was on the school's track team. I heard about you from Molly; she followed the team's activities… really closely," he finished lamely.

He knew that was kind of an understatement, but there wasn't really any nice way to phrase what she'd been doing.

"Molly Henderson?" Shara echoed, chuckling. "You mean my brother's stalker-in-training?" she laughed softly, right up until she looked back over at her brother and got really morose. "I wonder if he even remembers her now?"

"I've really never thought to ask him about that," Jake confessed.

"I guess it really isn't the kind of thing you talk about with strangers," she said, still staring at the sleeping form of her brother.

Jake, meanwhile, was starting to wonder just how Slade was sleeping through this entire exchange. He'd gotten the impression that Slade had greatly enhanced senses; an impression that had only been strengthened by the time that he had spent with the older boy. When he mentioned this, though, Shara just smiled knowingly.

"I guess you don't really know my brother, then," she said, gently running her fingers through Slade's black hair. "He only relaxes this much around people he trusts; he was up for awhile there when you first came in, but he's napping again now. Are you going to tell me who she is, though?"

Looking back over his shoulder where Shara's gaze was fixed, he saw Cassie standing there and remembered that he hadn't been the only one who wanted answers.


	15. Meeting Shara

"My name is Cassie," she said, crouching to put herself on more equal terms with the other girl. "It's nice to meet you, Shara."

"It's nice to meet you, too," she said, nodding. "Jake, you said, 'one of us'. That implies that there's more to this than just you and Cassie, I think. Care to fill me in?"

Sitting down – the story of the Animorphs was a long one, and he wanted to be at least reasonably comfortable while he told it – Jake looked up just as Tobias flew in through the open hayloft. The third member of their group looked a little harried. As harried as a hawk could manage to look, anyway.

(Jake, who's she?)

"Tobias, this is Shara," he said, knowing the other Animorph would be able to hear him. He knew first-hand how good a bird of prey's hearing was. "She's Slade's sister."

"One of your friends is a talking hawk?" Shara laughed. "I guess you're more interesting than I thought."

(She knows about us?)

"Yeah; I guess Slade told her. Right?"

"Yeah," she muttered, turning to look back at her brother with a morose expression. "Slade told me."

"Jake," Cassie said, calling attention to herself again. "Weren't we going to discuss something with Ax?"

"Who's that?" Shara asked.

"He's… hard to explain," Jake admitted. "You'll see what I mean when you meet him."

It was pretty easy to see the way Jake was sidestepping her question, but it was also plain that he just didn't know what to say about this Ax person. Maybe the guy was just really unique. That fit; not many people had that kind of a first name, after all. It made her curious about what his last name was, and also about his parents if they gave him that name.

If they did, they were probably interesting people themselves. Probably a lot like their father that way; she wondered if Ness – or not really Ness anymore, but Slade – even remembered their father anymore. He'd seemed to have remembered her well enough, but something had seemed off about that.

But then maybe that had just been her being on-edge from all the things that had happened to her since she'd been separated from her family. Or maybe she was just hoping that was the case.

When another bird flew into the barn, she ignored it in favor of her brother. He was still sleeping, and if they were going to go out and meet this Ax guy he'd have to wake up.

__

(Slade, we're going to go out and meet someone named Ax. Do you want to come?)

(Shara…) he said; as if her name was some kind of talisman to him. It was kind of weird, but then weird things had happened to them all; there was no reason something like this should be normal._ (Of course I'll come with you_,_)_ he said, opening his eyes as he sat up. _(Where are we going to meet him?)_

"I hadn't gotten around to asking that yet," she admitted, turning to look back at Jake.

"We're going to meet him out in the woods," he said. "There's less chance of someone we don't want knowing about this stumbling across us."

"This Ax of yours is _that _conspicuous, huh?" she asked, not sure herself if she was being serous or not.

"You'll understand when you meet him," Jake said, grinning just the slightest bit.

There was obviously something she wasn't in on yet – probably quite a few somethings – but as she'd just met up with these people, Shara made up her mind not to worry about that. Besides, Slade was still with her; that had to count for something. He seemed like he remembered some of what they'd meant to each other, even if it _was_ only subconsciously.

"Slade, can Shara morph?" Cassie asked.

She turned, feeling Slade's uneasiness – probably through that weird telepathic connection they had now – and saw that he looked sheepish. Like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar or something cliché like that; it would have been kind of funny if she hadn't known just how badly he was really taking this.

"I'm sorry, Jake; I should have asked for your permission, or waited until you were here," he said, addressing Jake even in spite of the fact that it'd been Cassie who'd asked him the question in the first place; there was a story behind that, she was sure. "But I wanted to get Shara ready to fight as soon as I could."

Slade's eyes glowed green for a moment, a tell-tale sign that she had learned to associate with the use of his – well, probably hers, too – telepathic power. She couldn't hear anything, but Jake sighed and adopted a put-upon look.

"I'm not going to punish you for anything, Slade," Jake said, sounding more resigned than she'd heard him sound since she'd met him.

__

I guess that's who he was talking to. "Well, since I can already do this morphing thing you've been talking about, I guess we can skip a step."

"I guess we can," Jake said, smiling amicably as Shara stood up.

She heard Slade standing up a few seconds later, and then they were all climbing down out of the hayloft to the floor. There, they were met by a boy with dark hair who was a bit shorter than her, and another girl. Shara didn't notice so much notice the girl, not at first. The boy had almost the same dubious expression on his face as Cain did when he was confronted with one of Conrad's 'experimental cooking projects'.

It was kind of funny; in a sad sort of way.

"I don't believe it," the boy said, looking between her and the other girl. "Rachel has a twin no one's ever heard about; this is just like daytime TV!"

"I seem to have left my Spaz-to-English dictionary at home," she said, turning to Jake with a slightly dubious look of her own. "Would someone care to translate for me?"

"I think he means that you and Rachel look a lot alike," he said, grinning.

"You guys, I think we should get going now," Cassie said, reminding Shara that they weren't really here to shoot the breeze and get to know each other.

That might come later, or it might not.

"Sorry, Cass," Marco said, still grinning and not looking all that repentant at all. "They really _do_ look a lot alike, you have to admit."

"I know, but we need to find out what Ax knows about these Leerans that Erek was talking about."

__

Leerans? Erek? Shara mused. _I feel so completely out of the loop right now; still, no sense complaining about it. I'm sure I'll find out what's going on soon enough. And if I don't, I can always ask._ Taking a breath to steady herself, she watched as they all started changing into various birds._ No need to ask how we're getting there, I guess._

Even Slade was starting to change, growing black feathers and shrinking down into the same type of black bird. She wondered for a few seconds if it was a raven or a crow; it could have been a jackdaw, but for some reason she got the feeling it wasn't. But that wasn't what she was supposed to be thinking about now.

Focusing on the seagull that she had made a part of her, Shara felt herself start to change. It wasn't quite as strange the second time around; watching the others change shape more than made up for that, though. It was stranger than the horror movies that Fritz and Cain – and sometimes Conrad – had seemed to enjoy so much.

It wouldn't have been out of place in a slasher film, except for the complete and conspicuous lack of blood. Nor would calling this kind of thing body horror be out of line; that description fit more than any other.

Once all of the transforming was done, Shara found herself in the midst of a bird of prey convention.

(I don't think you're going to fit in very well,) said a voice – almost telepathy but not quite – that sounded a lot like Cassie's said.

(I guess seagulls don't travel with birds of prey,) she said, chuckling a bit.

(Not normally,) Jake said, sounding oddly stern. (And we want to make this look as normal as we possibly can.)

She would have laughed if he hadn't sounded so forceful, and she was sorely tempted to start in any case. What could possibly make a _flock_ of predatory birds – birds who would have never traveled in flocks unless they were migrating, and who would only travel with their own species – look at all_ normal_?

Just then, she noticed that Cassie was back in human form; had probably demorphed while she was thinking things over.

"Shara, demorph and I'll find you a bird of prey," Cassie said, before she could even think of a question.

Focusing on herself the way she'd learned to do, Shara watched as everything seemed to shrink back down to the normal size that she was accustomed to. Back in her own body again, she didn't have the time even to stretch before Cassie took her hand and was leading her amongst the cages of injured birds.

"What kind of birds do you have here?" she asked, trying to think of something that would be able to keep up with the other Animorphs in their morphs and be able to defend itself besides.

He'd been awake for some time, down here in the Radam's base of operations, but Javelin still didn't feel like he belonged there. He knew it was probably stupid, this feeling that he'd been something else – some_one_ else – before he'd been Teknoman Javelin. The Radam were the ones who'd created him in the first place – probably – and so he owed them at least _some_ loyalty.

Whatever thoughts he was having to the contrary, he was Radam. Nothing else mattered.

They'd managed to find a Kestrel for her to acquire, so that was one problem taken care of. She still wasn't too clear on the specifics of what they were going to do, she just knew that they were going out into the forest to speak to one of their friends who they – for whatever reason – couldn't bring to the barn.

Shara was fairly confident of her ability to piece together what was going on from the evidence that was being presented to her, but she also knew that these people – whoever they were and whatever they were doing – were going out of their way to help her. And so she would most likely have the option to ask about anything she couldn't figure out for herself.

__

Okay, fact one: 'Ax' is not a human name. Still, these new kids couldn't be working for the Radam; the fact that they didn't possess the red eyes that distinguished those monsters notwithstanding, the technology was wrong. The only shapeshifting that any of the Radam could do was limited to changing in and out of that armor of theirs. Still, that left the question of just how a bunch of human kids had come to possess that kind of power.

That was the first thing she was going to have to ask about, Shara knew.

(There's Ax's feeding ground,) Tobias said. (We'll be able to find him quickly from here.)

__

Feeding ground? she wondered, scanning the grass for any signs of bones or other things. There were none; it was just a large grassy meadow with some vaguely strange-looking hoof prints in the grass. Shara found herself wondering, not for the first time, just what kind of people she had fallen in with.

They seemed nice enough, and she knew from her extra senses that they weren't Radam in disguise. So that was good, but it still didn't tell her just who these people were and what they were actually doing. But then, that was probably something she was going to have to find out for herself.

Once they had all landed – kind of an interesting experience, that – and had started to change back into their human forms, she saw – Tobias, was it? – fly off into the forest.

"I wonder where he's going?" she mused aloud.

"I think he's probably going hunting," the girl named Cassie said.

Looking over the path the hawk had taken, Shara found that it did indeed lead deeper into the forest. She thought a normal hawk _would_ have been getting hungry by now, and she was starting to feel that way herself, so what Cassie had said was probably true.

"Why don't the rest of you head back to the barn," the boy – whose name, she recalled, was Marco – said, sounding like he was trying not to sound too eager. "I can handle things with Ax on my own."

"What about Shara?" Rachel – and the resemblance between them really _was _uncanny, if the other girl had had reddish eyes Shara would have been unnerved by it – asked sensibly. "Ax is going to want to know about her."

"Well, you know we can always tell him about her later," Marco said, and Shara could tell that there was something he didn't want to have known.

Cain, too, would always try to dance around things that he didn't want to confront. Always try to find ways of talking about something else… she just hoped working with this boy wouldn't be too much like living with her absent brother. Shara didn't think she could handle that.

"Why _don't_ we head back to the barn?" she suggested to the other kids. "I haven't gotten to know any of you, and I think I'd rather be a little less outnumbered when we meet this Ax. Whoever _he_ is."

She didn't see any real acknowledgement from Marco, but if he was that much like Cain then he wouldn't give one anyway.

"All right," Cassie said, smiling in a way that was obviously intended to be comforting. "Let's go back to the barn and then we can all get acquainted with each other."

"That sounds good," she said, trying to keep the attention on her; Marco obviously had something he didn't want to talk about, and it was none of her business to try finding out.

He would tell them later or not, depending on what he wanted.


	16. Tales Told

As he watched the others leave, Marco found himself smiling. He hadn't known exactly how he would have avoided talking about what had happened to his mom without trying to lie – Cassie was perceptive and wasn't really one to give up on something like that – and he wasn't sure he could get away with it. He'd have to think up some way to make it up to her.

Some way that the others wouldn't think to look too closely into.

Turning back to the forest, he listened for the telltale hoofbeats of the Animorphs' sixth member. He still had questions that needed answering, of course.

Once she'd changed back into her human form for the second time that day, Shara had folded her legs and waited while Cassie landed and changed back as well. Jake had left on the way back, claiming that he would be missed if he didn't get home soon. There could have been a story behind that, but then maybe she was looking into things too deeply again.

Father _had_ always said that it was one of her flaws.

When Cassie sat down in front of her, folding her own legs in almost the same way, Shara wondered just what kind of story this was going to be. It had to be a strange one, what with the talking hawk and all. But the specifics were what she was really wondering about.

What would their story be?

Very sad, as it turned out. And reminiscent of the tales she could tell of what had happened to _her_ family at the hands of the Radam. These Yeerks sounded like they could have easily been inspired by the brutal tactics of the Radam; turning people against their families and families against their planet. Breaking the bonds that held people together.

She nodded in all the places that struck a chord within her, and asked questions to clarify things she felt like she didn't understand, but mostly what Shara did was to listen. Listen as Cassie described what it had been like to fight Visser Three those times they'd had to; listen as she described the underground hell that was the Yeerk pool; listen as she talked about all the battles they had been through so far.

More and more, Shara found herself empathizing with these people – these Animorphs – and wanting to help them. As much as the Radam needed stopping for what they were trying to do, as much as she hated them for what they had done to her and her family, these Yeerks needed to be stopped just as urgently. That was when she made her decision: she was going to join these Animorphs in their fight.

No matter what.

"That's pretty much what's been happening up till now," Cassie said, concluding her story.

"I _had_ wondered how you all met my brother after… everything that happened," she said, leaning back on her hands and trying to relax at least a little.

The battles they had been through, while some of them _had_ had their elements of fun, were mostly one long record of horror. Pretty much what anyone would expect from a war, but still a hard thing for anyone to have to deal with. It was good to know what she could expect, though a bit depressing.

"Was there anything else you wanted to know about?" Cassie asked?

Before she could think of anything else to say, Shara's stomach growled.

"Or do you think you'd just like something to eat?" she chuckled.

Shara chuckled right along with her. "I think food would be a great idea right about now."

__

(I second that,) Slade – he was really someone completely different than her brother Ness, so it was easier to just think of him that way – piped up silently in their minds.

"All right," Cassie said, nodding and smiling and generally seeming like she wasn't unnerved by any of this. "I'll see what I can bring up here for you. Do you want anything in particular, Shara?"

"As long as it's not tofu, I'll be fine," she said, trying to sound just as unaffected as Cassie.

"Okay then, I'll see you in a bit," the other girl said, turning and leaving the hayloft with a wave.

Unfolding her legs and settling back on her hands, Shara turned to look over at Slade again. This was going to take a lot of getting used to, even her own brother was almost completely unfamiliar to her now, but she was determined to face this challenge. For herself, and for the memory of her family.

When he awoke for the second time, prodded back into consciousness by the feeling of something off with his crop of teknopods, Darkon immediately sensed what was wrong. It would have been difficult for someone with his intimate knowledge of his assets not to; another of his Teknomen was missing. The young female named Shara had been taken.

That was something of an annoyance, since the girl would have made a very capable Hunter. Still, there was nothing for it now but to wait for her to die. The failsafe could not have neglected to activate this time, so there would be no reason to search for her. _Still, it is always best to be certain, I suppose._

Immersing himself in the workings of his teknopods, Darkon had a rather unpleasant surprise: it turned out that the failsafe had somehow been circumvented once again. One insufficiency had been troublesome, but it could have easily been explained by some interaction between his teknoplants, the unfamiliar biology of these Humans, and the soil of this world. Two, on the other hand, made it more likely that someone or some_thing_ had tampered with his plants.

Of course, that left the question of just _who_ and more importantly _what_ had been able to affect his plants in his base with him here to oversee them. He would have known almost instantly if there was another of his kind on this minor planet. To say nothing of the fact that this base of his would act as a beacon to any wandering Teknoman without a Warlord to command them, of course.

Still, it _was_ an interesting mental problem. If not something he had the slightest idea how to go about solving.

As she settled herself down to sleep, Shara tried to ignore the subtle prodding from the back of her mind; the feeling that was trying to lead her back into the forest. Back to where Darkon and the other Radam were waiting for her.

There was no way in hell she was ever going to go back there. Not on this side of life, anyway.

Settling back down again, after having sat up when a particularly strong urge hit her, Shara sighed. it was going to be a long night…

When she woke up the next morning, Cassie wondered just how Shara was going to be able to keep _two_ people living in the barn a secret. Keeping Slade was already something of a hassle with the way he ate, if Shara's eating habits were anything like his… But that was a problem for later.

Right now she had to get breakfast, both for herself and for the two people she had been tasked with taking care of.

Levering herself out of bed, Cassie made her way to the kitchen. She knew that she would have to get some normal clothes on before she headed out to the barn to do her chores. But for now, no one would say anything if she came to breakfast in her pajamas.

She hoped her mom had made pancakes today; those were the best.


	17. Fear and Water

It'd taken a bit of work, though not so much as he'd thought it might, to convince Jake that the Animorphs _had_ to break up whatever new operation the Yeerks were running around Royan island. Whatever they were trying to do out there, they couldn't be allowed to finish their work. Still, just because the Animorphs were all going to be heading out to deal with a Yeerk plan that was being overseen by Visser One, that was no reason to tell the others anything they didn't need to know.

No reason at all.

It wasn't really something that any of the others needed to know about; they would only pity him if they did. Pity was the one thing he hated more than anything else, the one thing he couldn't deal with. Especially from people who were as close to him as the other Animorphs.

He'd just have to make sure that none of the others found out.

He was just glad that today was a Saturday; there wasn't much chance of them getting to do this kind of a mission on a weekday. Especially since they had to keep up the illusion that they were all just a bunch of normal kids. That included getting good enough grades that their various parents wouldn't think to watch them too closely.

The barn's door had been left open, he was thankful for that since the thing was _heavy_, and when he saw that all of the others were gathered in there – minus Shara and Slade, of course, since no one was supposed to know about them – Marco closed the thing.

"Tobias?" Jake called, looking up to the rafters where the Animorphs' resident bird-boy kept watch over them all.

If the bird-boy had anything to say in response to what was a pretty cryptic request as far as Marco could tell, he didn't hear it. But a few seconds later, Slade and Shara climbed down the ladder and made their way over to one of the hay bales to sit down. Just one over from Jake on the right, which had to be intentional on Slade's part.

"All right," Rachel said, drawing the attention of pretty much everyone in the room. "Now that all of us are here, what did you want to talk to us about?"

She was looking at Jake, and Marco wondered for a second if Jake would be the one telling the others about what they had both discovered. He'd remember his promise of course, so there was no need to worry about that.

"Erek the Chee contacted us two days ago," Jake said seriously, drawing the attention of everyone in the room the way he usually did. "What Marco and I found out is that the Yeerks are conducting a secret operation from the waters around Royan Island. Even Erek couldn't find out what they're trying to do, but this plan is big enough to be overseen by Visser One."

"You want me to tell you who Erek is, Shara?"

"Cassie already told me," the girl in question said, smiling. "But thank you for the offer, Rachel."

"All right," Marco said, clapping his hands once to draw attention to himself. "Here's what I've found out: Royan is a small, private island about twenty miles off the coast. It's about four miles long, three miles wide and is shaped like a crescent moon."

"Very poetic," Rachel broke in. "Crescent moon."

"Hey, it's a quote from the guidebook, all right?!"

"Take it easy, Marco," Shara said, even as Marco winced internally. "No one's making fun of you."

Taking a breath to steady himself – he really should have had a witty comeback ready for that, snapping made him look tense – Marco sat back further on his haybale to help him look more relaxed. "Anyway, Ax says these Leerans are psychic. So we'll have to be very careful around them; none of us should get too close."

"So, what do you think would be too close?" Jake asked Ax.

(I don't know,) the Andalite admitted. (I think within a few feet, but I can't be completely certain.)

"How will we even get to the island?" Cassie asked reasonably. "By air or by sea?"

(Twenty miles is a long way to try and swim,) Tobias pointed out.

"So we'll do a combination," Jake said, more in the tone of one giving a suggestion than an order. "Fly out there, rest, then morph to dolphin."

(Not all of us have dolphin morphs. Shara, Slade and I could probably fly cover on this one.)

Jake winced; he'd completely forgotten about that. "I guess we could do it like that."

"Well," Cassie said, obviously considering what she was going to say. "The Gardens are kind of on the way to where we're going. We could take Slade and Shara out there so they can acquire a dolphin to morph. And if Tobias wants to sit out this mission-"

(I didn't say anything like that,) Tobias said quickly. (It's just, it'd be kind of obvious for a Red-Tailed Hawk to land on a dolphin all of a sudden.)

"You two have been awfully quiet over there," Cassie observed. "Don't you have anything to add?"

"I don't think Slade has much to say," Shara said, looking to her brother for confirmation even as he nodded. "And you all seem to have things figured out. I don't think there's much either of us could contribute right now."

"You both know it's your choice if you want to acquire dolphins," Cassie said. "It _would_ be useful to have two more sets of eyes in the water."

"All right," Slade said, nodding and not even looking over at Shara to see what she thought. "We'll head down to The Gardens and acquire a dolphin."

Jake looked like he wanted to say something to them, but then he turned and spoke to Tobias instead. "You've said before that flying over water is hard for you. Are you really sure that you want to fly cover for this?"

(I already said I'd go dolphin with the rest of you,) the hawk pointed out. (Twenty miles out over water aren't my best flying conditions, you don't get many thermals out that far. It's mostly just dead air. I'll be heading out with the rest of you. I'll acquire a dolphin like the rest of you. Okay. I'll definitely do that. And then, hey, it'll be no problem right? I mean, a dolphin in the water is like a bird in the air, right?)

Everyone who knew Tobias was staring at him like he was crazy. Shara for her part was slightly confused, Slade was just impassive.

"Tobias, are you afraid of the water?"

(Water? Afraid? Me? why would I be afraid of water?) he asked, not fooling anyone.

"Well, I'd say that's a yes," Marco said, chuckling. "You're not afraid to be miles up in the air, but you're afraid of _water_? Does that strike anyone else as being, I don't know, _crazy_?"

"Marco, don't be a jerk," Shara said, prompting a reproving look from Slade which she ignored.

(It's not the water,) Tobias said, sounding annoyed. (It's just… there's no air in the water. It presses in all around you.)

Marco looked just about ready to say something else, when Rachel spoke up. "Why don't we stop busting on Tobias?" she said, pinning Marco with a glare so there could be no doubt about who she was talking to. "If he doesn't want to come with us than he doesn't want to come."

(No; I really should come. Flying out over the water is really something I like to avoid unless it's absolutely necessary. I'll go dolphin with the rest of you. And- hey, it'll be fine. I mean, dolphins live in the rater, right? a dolphin in the water would be like a bird in the air, right?)

There was more than a hint of desperation in Tobias' voice when he asked that question. Marco was smirking, getting ready to needle the hawk a bit more, when Shara dug her elbow into his side. Smiling sweetly, she elbowed him again just as he was about to say something.

"I'm sure you'll be fine," she said, smiling up at him.

"Okay, then," Jake said, drawing everyone's attention back to him. "Tobias, Slade and Shara need to acquire dolphins at The Gardens. So let's get in the air and hope we get lucky. Shara?"

"What is it, Jake?"

"You _can_ do that invisibility thing that Slade does, right?"

"I can," she confirmed, wondering briefly where he'd learned about that power, then deciding it wasn't important. "Don't worry, we'll both make sure we stay out of sight."

"That's good," Jake said, nodding calmly. "Let's morph."

Knowing that Ax didn't have a seagull morph, Cassie took him over to the row of cages to acquire one. Then the seven Animorphs not in avian form changed with varying speed into a flock of seagulls. No one, save Marco perhaps, would have suggested that Tobias acquire and morph a gull after it had been revealed how much he disliked the idea of going into the water.

Cassie felt it would have been insensitive in the extreme, and most of the Animorphs – save for Slade – would have agreed with her.

Once all of the seven who would be traveling in seagull form had morphed, they took off from the barn and powered their way into the air. It was more of a struggle in these forms than it had been in their bird-of-prey forms, since seagulls were not made for the kind of flying that birds-of-prey were capable of.

They did, however, have the advantage of ubiquity. Everyone would have noticed a flock of predatory birds, not only because of that fact that predatory birds didn't travel in flocks very often in the first place but because those kinds of birds would _never_ be seen in the company of so many others who were not of their own kind.

Seagulls, however, did not have that particular problem.

(I can't believe I'm flying with a flock of seagulls,) Tobias grumped good-naturedly. (I could get kicked out of the hawk fraternity for hanging out with lowlifes.)

(I'm sure your hunting-buddies will find it in their hearts to forgive you,) Shara said, laughing softly.

The seven seagulls weren't really close enough to Tobias to be considered actually 'hanging out', since that would have drawn the attention of far too many people, but for Tobias it had been an opportunity to have a bit of fun. That had been enough.

(Ah, our brothers and sisters await,) Marco stated, as The Gardens – and the large flock of seagulls flying around both the park and the zoo area of same – came into view.

(They probably already got all the good food,) Rachel grumbled.

Shara laughed, while Marco was left to sincerely hope that Rachel _had_,in fact, been merely joking.

The eight of them rode a following breeze over the gate where they would have been required to pay if they had been in human form when they passed it.

(Let's go this way!) Marco shouted, feeling a sudden, impulsive need for something a bit more thrilling than simply flying.

(Which way?) Jake asked.

(This way! Follow me!) Banking left, Marco headed for the large, wooden roller-coaster that had once been one of the things he had enjoyed most about The Gardens.

At least before he had become an Animorph and discovered that there were far more thrilling things in the world.

There were two boys in the car; both about the same age as Marco and Jake. Both of them had their arms up in the air, clearly waiting for the moment when the car they were riding would go over the hill they were just about to crest. Landing on the front railing of the car just as it crested the hill, Marco clamped down on the metal with all the strength in his seagull's feet.

(Marco, what do you think you're doing?) Jake demanded. (We're not here to play around.)

Still, Jake landed next to Marco on the railing of the car. Just as Marco had known he would. Ignoring the efforts that the two guys made to shoo them away, Marco turned to look at the empty air in front of the car. Just then, their car slid up and over the top of the hill and plunged down into the valley in front of it.

Keeping the momentum it had gathered from its trip over the first hill, the car roared over the next at almost full speed. Marco opened his wings just after the car had reached the top of the second hill and had been hurled from the railing of the car as easily as an artillery shell being fired. Screaming with equal parts fear and exhilaration, Marco and Jake flew a perilous course through the supports of the coaster itself.

(Come on, that was cool, admit it!) Marco said, laughing.

(Yes, that was very cool,) Jake conceded.

(We're still our old selves, aren't we? I mean, we haven't really changed from who we were before all this started, have we?)

(Sure, Marco,) Jake said easily.

(No, I mean it,) Marco pressed, suddenly realizing just how important this was to him. (We're still just the same as we always were. Nothing that happens is going to change who we are, right?)

(Marco, I'm not really a philosopher, you know?)

(Yeah. Well, no one had better be expecting _me _to be changing any time soon, that's all I'm saying. No matter how many morphs, no matter how many battles we face, I'm still just going to be plain old me. Everyone just better get used to it.)

(Marco, if it makes you feel any better, you'll always be just a punk to me,) Jake said, laughing.

Marco laughed as well. (Thanks; I appreciate it.)

Rejoining the others above the tank that held the four dolphins, Marco stared down at the tank.

(Well,) he said, laughing. (This is certainly going to be interesting. A hawk making actual, physical contact with a dolphin? I mean, at least Slade and Shara can turn invisible,) he chuckled.

(You know about that?) Shara asked.

(We found out during the last crazy adventure we Animorphs had.)

(You mean the one with the horses and Area 51?) she asked, a note of incredulous amusement in her voice.

(Yeah,) he laughed. (That's the one. Cassie told you about what we found there?)

(Yeah,) Shara laughed. (She definitely did.)


	18. Hawk and Dolphin

(You might as well get it over with,) Marco called cheerfully, directing his thought-speech to Tobias even as Shara and Slade dove for the clear space just behind the dolphin tanks.

(Fine.)

Tobias dove, a full three and a half feet behind the two seagulls as they fell through the air on course for their respective destinations. The two siblings were able to land safely in an area that was free of both workers and patrons. And from there they were able to demorph and fade into invisibility with impunity.

Tobias, however, had to remain in full view as he dove. Left to acquire a dolphin with his talons; talons that were obviously designed as weapons and little more. He would have been fairly inconspicuous at the beginning of his dive, save for one little bit of bad luck.

Such bad luck as Tobias was having had no effect on either of the twins, of course, and they were able to quickly scale the stairs leading up to the dolphin tank and acquire a par of dolphins for themselves. Moving carefully so as not to alert any of the dolphin trainers to their presence atop the tank with them, the two siblings left the tank for the safety of the dark behind it.

Back in the air, Tobias was just raking his wings forward to cancel his remaining momentum. Hitting the dolphin with a fraction of his former momentum, Tobias concentrated and acquired it. Unhappily for him, this particular dolphin – unlike the ones that Slade and Shara had been able to acquire – was in motion when he acquired it.

(Oh no,) Tobias said with an eerie calm, as he tried to loosen the talonhold he had on the dolphin and failed.

The dolphin, for his part, continued on his previous trajectory. A trajectory that, unhappily for Tobias, would carry it right back into the water. (I'm stuck! My left talon is-!) As the water closed over his head, Tobias fell silent.

The crowd was on its feet, shouting and loudly wondering just what was going on. They certainly weren't the only ones; the dolphin trainers were all running around, each trying to entice the dolphin to come over to the side of the tank, where they would be able to remove the hawk from his back.

The dolphin, however, was having none of it. The playful nature of his kind had led it to believe that this was just one in a series of endless games that his trainers chose to play.

(Aaaaahhhhhh! He's gonna drown me!) Tobias screamed, on the knife-edge of panic as the dolphin leaped and splashed-down again and again.

(Hold your breath!) Jake shouted, trying to be helpful.

(Gee, do you think?! Why didn't I think of that?!)

(He must be all right,) Marco said sagely. (He's still capable of being sarcastic.)

(You know, you're not helping,) Shara chided. (Tobias, try to loosen your grip when you come up again! The momentum should throw you off!)

(Start acquiring him!) Rachel called. (It should put him into a trance!)

(I _am_ acquiring him!) Tobias shouted back. (Guess what? He's not in a trance!)

(Here I come to save the day!) Marco singsonged.

(What are you planning to do?) Jake asked, not sure if he liked the tone of Marco's voice.

(Kamikaze!) Marco shouted gleefully, folding his wings back and diving.

He'd aimed for the place where Tobias would most likely surface next, and sure enough that was the next place the dolphin breached the surface of the water. Marco would have been grinning, just a bit crazily, if he had been in human form. Luckily for him, he wasn't; both for the fact that he would have been unable to fly in his human form, and for the fact that he would have been completely obvious.

Slamming into Tobias with all the force that his speed had imparted to him, Marco knocked the hawk free and then flapped to regain altitude before he could fall into the water himself.

(Ow!) Tobias grumbled.

(Ow yourself,) Marco said. (I just saved your life.)

(Yeah,) Tobias groused, with somewhat strained good-humor. (Next time, could you try finding a way to save me that _doesn't_ involve breaking any bones?)

The two of them made their way back to where the others were waiting, Tobias muttering various unpleasant things to himself.

(Are you all right?) Shara asked privately, once the Animorphs were on their way out of The Gardens and she could spare some attention from keeping up with them.

(I'm fine,) Tobias said shortly, not really in the mood to talk.

(Are you sure about that?)

(Yes.)

Shara sighed; she hadn't really been expecting someone she hadn't known for even a full day to want to confide in her, but Tobias had sounded so depressed that she couldn't help but try. Still, he might have felt better for knowing that someone was worried about him. That was really all she could hope for.

(The dolphin should be okay,) Cassie said. (Very superficial cuts. The vets will put some salve on him and give him a preventive antibiotic, I suppose, just to be safe.)

(Well, as long as the _dolphin_ is all right,) Tobias drawled. (Because I really, really hope the _dolphin_ is all right.)

(Are you going to be sarcastic for the rest of the day?) Marco asked.

(Yes. I am going to be sarcastic for the rest of the day,) Tobias snapped. (I nearly drowned. Now I'm going to go _become_ the thing that nearly drowned me. I will be sarcastic until further notice.)

Marco, chuckling internally at not being the only one to have problems with this mission. Admittedly, Tobias' reasons weren't remotely the same as his – and he wasn't going to speak a word of his situation for anything – but he could at least get a few digs in. It would make him feel better, if nothing else.

(You know,) he said mock-thoughtfully. (That could be a regular act down at The Gardens. Hawk and dolphin. Kind of like a dolphin rodeo, if you really think about it.)

(Marco? You've got to remember that right now, you're just a lowly seagull. Which is practically a pigeon; and I'm a hawk. You want to keep grinding my nerves, I'll be glad to show you the difference when it comes to arial combat,) Tobias said tolerantly, with just the slightest edge of annoyance.

(Dolphin rodeo,) Marco repeated. (I'm just saying it has some possibilities.)

Shara sighed inwardly, and continued flying.


	19. Crash Course

The eight of them continued on their way to the beach, passing over the last remnants of the city on their way. Soon they had passed over the beach itself, and all of them began scanning for Royan island. No one was quite sure who spotted it first, but they were all soon aware of the dark, lumpy shape on the horizon.

It took them half an hour of determined flying to reach Royan, and Marco had been the first to note the stunted, twisted trees and the lack of a beach, which he surmised was the reason that this place had never been particularly popular with tourists. The eight of them flew over a sparse growth of pine trees, with waving grass and wildflowers, and in the distance they could see a large mansion with outbuildings surrounding it on three sides.

Closer to their flightpath, they could see a small inlet that housed a dock with a pair of boats moored there. There was a huge yacht opposite a smaller, sleeker speedboat.

(So, I guess that's Mr. Royan's house?) Rachel queried, looking toward the mansion.

(No. The original Royan was a bootlegger back in the twenties. According to the guidebook, the house is owned by the Marquez family now. Whoever they are,) Marco said.

(Let's land as far away from the buildings as we possibly can,) Jake said, always the one to be wary of possible danger.

Continuing on their way, seven of the eight of them landed on the far side of the scraggly pine forest. Under enough tree-cover that they would be hard to spot from the air, but close enough to the beach that they wouldn't have to walk too far to reach the water. Tobias stayed in the air to watch for any threats to the group, and also to learn the lay of the island.

(There are people in the house,) he reported, struggling slightly with the dead air around the island. (There's a guard posted on the roof. There's another down at the dock, both of them are carrying concealed weapons.)

"The guards don't mean anything," Jake said, having demorphed along with the other six Animorphs who had taken on seagull forms about half a minute hence. "Whoever owns this place is going to want to protect themselves, and they're rich enough to have these people."

"Real useful, having you in the air to look out for us," Marco said, grinning.

(Don't try to butter me up,) Tobias drawled, and Marco could tell he was just playing around himself. (Dolphin rodeo.)

"Have I mentioned that I meant that in the nicest possible way?" Marco shot back.

"According to Erek, what we're looking for is underwater," Jake said, before the gentle ribbing could go any farther. "We might as well get going now as ever. Let's head for the water," Jake paused for a moment, looking at Ax, then at his hooves. "We need to get rid of those hoof-marks. A Yeerk might see them and recognize them as Andalite."

(Yes, Prince Jake,) Ax said.

"Just Jake," he said tolerantly, turning to head for the open water.

"So," Marco said, turning to look toward the pair of untransformed Teknomen that were walking at the forefront of the group. "Any words of wisdom from the strong, silent types?"

"Wouldn't that spoil the mystique?" Shara asked, smirking slightly in his direction.

Marco laughed. "Nice comeback."


	20. Rendezvous at Royan

The seven of them reached the open water in about half a minute.

"All right, let's morph," Jake said. "Everyone to dolphin, all except Ax who's going to be using his shark morph."

They all waded into the water until they were waist deep, the water tugging and pulling at them and forcing sand between their toes. Shara, for her part, thought the sand felt kind of nice.

"Let's do it," Rachel said, as Tobias swooped down to land on her right shoulder.

"Let's get fishical, fishical," Marco sang out.

"Now _that_ was good," Shara said, laughing.

Rachel, on the other hand, wasn't quite so impressed. "Olivia Newton-John? Have you been listening to dinosaur-rock radio again?"

Shara cuffed her upside the head for that. "Do _not_ insult the classics in my presence," she said, only slightly serious. "There's a reason they're classic, after all."

"Is there _any_ chance that we could just do what we came here to do?" Jake demanded impatiently.

"Anyway, dolphins aren't fish," Cassie said authoritatively. "They're mammals."

(Oh, everyone just shut up so we can get this over with!) Tobias shouted.

"Very tense," Marco said, winking at Cassie. "A few too many high-caffeine mice."

Shara shook her head, and all of the Animorphs closed their eyes and focused on their respective dolphin morphs. Having only morphed a seagull, Shara wasn't quite prepared for the drastic structural changes she was being forced to undergo; the first thing she lost were her arms. They seemed to be sucked right back into her body, while her hands and fingers melted and melded together to form flippers.

Her face bulged out and out, forced forward by the growth of more bones than could be found in a human face. Her skin changed from human-standard to the springy, gray rubber of the dolphin, as her eyes migrated to the sides of her head and gave her a view of the changes that the rest of the Animorphs – her new friends and her brother – were going through as they morphed.

Slade's face – her brother's familiar face – had changed into the grinning face of a dolphin, and the change was slowly reshaping him from the neck down. Still, the fact that her brother still sported the shaggy mop of black hair that she had always considered his trademark was extremely funny to her. Morphed or not, amnesiac or not, he would always be her brother.

Falling on her stomach in the cold water – that wasn't really all that cold anymore, she noticed – Shara noticed a slight stinging in her eyes before she was suddenly able to see much more clearly. It was almost like seeing through air again. There was a momentary jolt of fear when her trachea closed up, but soon just fine.

She was breathing _through a hole in her back_, but she was breathing fine nonetheless.

When she started to feel her legs fusing together from the waist down, she knew that the morph was almost complete. Looking around at the others, she found herself surrounded by six other dolphins, and a single shark. And, for some reason that she wasn't equipped to understand at the moment, she really hated the shark among them. There was no real reason for the bone-deep hatred she was feeling, and even less so since she hadn't known Ax long enough to form any kind of impression of him.

But then, it wasn't really her who had a problem with the shark. It was the mind of the dolphin she was currently sharing a body with. That would bear thinking about later, but for now she had other things to think about.

(Let's just swim a circle around this island and see what we see,) Jake suggested, as they all kicked their tails and swam out of the shallows,

(I'm guessing that what we'll see is a whole lot of fish,) Marco said dubiously. (The more I think about this, the more I think that Erek must have made a mistake. I mean, this island is awfully peaceful.)

(All the more reason for these Yeerks to be hiding something out here: no one would think to look for it,) Shara pointed out. (Besides, Cassie told me that Erek's an android. I don't think he'd make mistakes like that.)

(Someone could have given him the wrong information,) Marco said.

(They could have,) Shara allowed. (But why would they think to? From what Cassie told me, they all think he's on their side.)

(Who cares about the specifics?!) Cassie called back giddily. (Let's just swim around and see what's here!)

With that, Cassie took off at full speed, laughing like the carefree dolphin she was for the moment. None of the others could quite resist following the instincts of their dolphin morphs to give chase, and not even Slade tried to resist. Following in Cassie's wake as she powered through the water, the eight of them dove and surfaced like a team of well-trained divers.

Leaping and diving as they made their way through the water, the seven dolphins laughed and chattered to one another. Marco fired a blast of echolocation, and the picture he was returned disturbed the perfect happiness of the dolphin whose body he shared. Forcibly pushing thoughts of Ax in shark morph – and sharks in general – out of his mind, Marco pulled the dolphin's happiness around himself like a shield.

He wanted more than anything to be happy; what he was going to be facing in that facility brought up a lot of painful memories for him.

(Okay, let's try to focus a little here,) Jake said, drawing the attention of the group. (Keep the shoreline on your left, and let's take a quick run around the island.)

(You mean like a race?) Tobias asked eagerly. (Because that would be really cool!)

(Well, I guess you've more or less gotten over your fear of water by now, right Tobias?)

(It's hard to be afraid of anything right now,) the morphed hawk said. (This was worth it. This is so cool! It's like flying, but with a really thick wind. Come on! Race you guys around the island!)

The seven of them took off, blasting around the little island at as fast a pace as they could manage. Ax, for his part, stayed a few body-lengths behind. More to keep the shark's killing instinct in check than out of any real desire not to be near the rest of the Animorphs.

They stayed close together for the most part, diving and racing for the surface when they needed to breathe, but one of them was always trying to get out ahead of the rest of the group. Just for the thrill of being first in their impromptu race, but when one of them sped up, the rest of them would do so not long after. It wasn't a race any of them could really win, but being dolphins they enjoyed it all the same.

It was Marco who spotted it first, almost by chance he had fired a burst of echolocation at the exact moment that they had come into range of the base. The picture he received startled him, and all the more so because it didn't match up at all with what his eyes were showing him.

(What is _that_?) he demanded of no one in particular.

(What's what?) Jake asked.

(Shoot some clicks,) he suggested.

Every one of the dolphins did so, filling that section of the water with the rapid-fire clicks that would allow them to locate things that had been hidden from their sight. Whether by darkness, opacity of the water, or in this case a holographic projection.

(That's _weird_,) Shara said, taking in the divergent images she was getting from her eyes and her echolocation.

(What is it?) Ax asked. (Are you sensing something?)

(What _is_ that?) Cassie asked, surprised.

(I don't know,) Tobias said. (But I do know that it's not natural.)

(Let's go check it out, then,) Marco said. (There are some definite limits to this echolocation thing.)

Taking more complete control of their dolphin bodies, the seven Animorphs dove deeper, aiming for the anomaly that their echolocation had shown them. They had sensed a large, angular structure just half a mile off the coast of Royan island. Deep enough under the water that the wake from the boats would be a non-issue, and any scuba divers would be dealt with long before they could come close enough to see anything important.


	21. Underwater Scouting

Marco was at once eager and apprehensive about getting closer to that particular Yeerk facility. One the one hand, his mother was there. On the other, his mother was the host of Visser One, the most powerful of the Animorphs' enemies. He didn't know just what he would do – or what he would feel – when he confronted again, and he wasn't even sure if he _wanted_ to go any farther.

What he wanted to do would have to take a backseat to what he had to do, of course, since he didn't want to let any of the others know exactly what was going on. He didn't want to be pitied by any of them, and the surest way to avoid that was to keep them from finding out about his mom's… situation. That was why he wasn't going to hesitate: the others would start to wonder why he was so apprehensive, and one of them was likely to put two and two together.

As she studied the ocean floor in front of her, relying on her echolocation more than her eyes to see, Shara wondered just what it was that the Yeerks could be doing down here. There could be no doubt; the Radam wouldn't bother with a place where they wouldn't be able to catch humans to transform, and human technology hadn't advanced to the point where they could shield something from sight like this.

(Erek's trick,) Marco said, once they had come to a point where their echolocation told them that they were right on top of the structure, but their eyes only saw a normal seabed. (They're using the same holographic camouflage the Chee use. A hologram of a normal seabed. That way it'll be invisible to any divers that might come down here, and to planes flying over on sunny days.)

(And to anyone in dolphin morph who's trying to find it?) Shara suggested with gentle good humor.

(Yes, that too,) Marco said with a chuckle.

(But is it just a hologram, or is it a forcefield like Erek uses?) Jake wondered.

(It would take a great deal of energy to sustain a hologram this large,) Ax pointed out. (To maintain a forcefield in water would take the energy level of a Dome ship. Especially one large enough to protect a facility this size.)

(Well, there's really only one way to find out,) Rachel said with her usual practicality. (Let's head in.)

The seven dolphins kicked their tails and swam, closing in on what their eyes told them was nothing more than an ordinary patch of ocean floor. Fifty feet from their original position, they were suddenly able to see through the illusion of normality that the Yeerk facility was hiding behind. They were able to see exactly what it was that they were closing in on.

The structure was indeed very large and, strangely enough to Shara's sensibilities, various shades of pink. She had never really thought of pink as being a dangerous color, but with the Yeerks building this kind of a facility, that might change. _And I used to like pink,_ she mused, caught somewhere between regret and mordant good-humor.

All in all, the place looked like what she would have imagined a submarine base to look: the huge loading bays, two closed and one open, the blister-windows – designed to withstand the crushing pressure of the water all around them – and the people working at computer terminals inside the facility. It all looked so _normal_.

Aside from the aliens standing guard over the people working at the terminals, of course.

(Okay, so we know this is the place,) Rachel said, and Shara silently agreed with her. (Now all we have to do is figure out what they're doing in there. We need to get inside.)

(Easier said than done, that,) Shara pointed out.

(I need air,) Marco said, turning and heading for the surface.

That lead to the others, save for Ax, realizing that their own lungs were in need of fresh oxygen as well. The six other dolphins made for the surface not half a minute after Marco had left the group. Kicking their tails, they tore through the water and made for the bright barrier between the water and the air their bodies craved so much.

Bursting through in an almost perfectly-synchronized series of jumps, the seven dolphins blew out the stale air they'd been holding in their lungs and refilled them with fresh air once more. They mutually decided to stay up on the surface for about half a minute, getting reacquainted with the air and sun up above.

(That was definitely a Yeerk facility,) Jake said. (I saw Hork-Bajir.)

(So _that's_ what a Hork-Bajir looks like,) Shara said, speaking to no one in particular. (Cassie told me that they worked for the Yeerks, but she never told me quite what they looked like.)

(I wish I had my _real_ eyes,) Tobias said. (I'd be able to see what was on those computer monitors in there.)

(Well, maybe we could just swim around the place a few times,) Cassie suggested, trying to be practical. (See if they do anything. I mean, those three big openings have to be used for something. So there's obviously some major activity going on inside.)

(Excuse me,) Ax broke in.

(Yeah, Ax? What is it?) Jake asked.

(There are some fish that appear to be heading towards you.)

(I'm sure it's nothing to worry about,) Marco said. But then some gut instinct warned him against dismissing the Andalite's warning out of hand. (Large fish, Ax-man?)

(Yes. As large as my current morph. And they are rather strange in shape.)

(Strange how?) Marco asked, the feeling of foreboding that had led him to ask for more detail making him feel all the more unsettled.

(Their heads: they have heads that are flat on the front but extend out on each side. They have eyes at the end of each side extension. Also, they have fins like mine.)

Marco paused for a moment, mentally reviewing the information that the Andalite had relayed to him. Then, he felt his innards all but turn to ice as he realized just what Ax had been describing. (Hammerheads! Oh god, Hammerheads!)

The seven dolphins dove back into the deep water, wanting to see just how many sharks they were going to be faced with. As far as Marco was concerned, even one was far too many. He'd had enough bad experiences with sharks to last him more than a lifetime.


	22. First and Final

(There must be ten of them!) Tobias shouted, the sight of the small school of sharks filling him with apprehension.

(Ten of them versus seven dolphins and a tiger shark,) Rachel said offhandedly. (Not a problem. We can take 'em.)

If they had been in the right form to do anything of the sort, Marco would have grabbed Rachel by the shoulders and given her a good, hard shaking. There were times he thought he admired her reckless, insane courage, but there were other times when he just wanted to slap some sense into her. They had fought a group of sharks once before, and had come out the winners by only a very narrow margin.

There were more sharks this time, and that meant less of a chance for any of them to come out unscathed.

(Take it easy, everyone,) Jake said, trying to be calm even with ten sharks bearing down on them. (We don't know if they're going to attack us.)

(Sharks don't usually attack dolphins,) Cassie pointed out. (Not unless they're really hungry and outnumber the dolphins.)

(Well, I count ten of _them _and seven of _us_,) Marco said, becoming just the slightest bit hysterical. (I'd say that makes us outnumbered.)

(Well, then I guess we have to hope really, really hard that all of these sharks are full,) Shara said, beginning to feel slightly rattled herself.

(Any of you guys have tips for fighting sharks?) Tobias asked. (I wasn't here the last time you guys had to do this.)

(Yeah: don't let them bite you,) Marco said darkly.

The sharks came at them like a well-trained squad of soldiers. Fearless and seemingly unstoppable. Marco, who had been on the wrong end of a shark's teeth one too many times, shuddered as the sharks came in on the attack; he could vividly remember what it had felt like to have his tail bitten almost completely off.

He could still remember just how it had felt when one of the sharks had chewed through the lower third of his body, leaving it hanging by a few shreds of flesh and stings of guts.

(Okay, look,) Jake said sternly. (We don't need this fight. Let's get out of here.)

(We're just going to run away?!) Rachel demanded.

(You know, you're perfectly welcome to stay behind, Rachel,) Marco pointed out.

(Hey, we're fighting the Yeerks,) Cassie said. (Not some sharks that just happened to swim by.)

(Exactamundo. And I am _so_ out of here,) Marco said, turning to suit actions to words.

That was when he received the most unpleasant surprise of this, an already unpleasant day:

(Oh, my God!) Cassie shouted, Marco being too afraid to speak at this point. (There are more behind us!)

Four more sharks; making the match two against on in favor of the Hammerheads. Ax's shark morph provided something of a wildcard, but not enough to effect the odds in any meaningful way. Jake had given the order to retreat, and with what he had experienced before in a fight with sharks, Marco could easily be forgiven for what he did.

Forgiven, that is, by everyone but himself.

Turning at a right-angle to the two converging groups of sharks, Marco powered his tail and took off. Faster, he hoped, than any of the sharks would be able to follow.

(Move! Go! Get out of here!) Jake shouted, trying to get all of his friends out of harm's way.

Marco, for his part, was moving as fast as his dolphin tail could propel him. Frantically trying to leave behind the moving wall of sharpened teeth, all while the memory of being nearly torn in half by a fish very much like the ones he was now confronted with continued to play in his head. It was vivid enough that he could all but feel the flesh of his body ripping as the sharks tore into it.

(Head for shore!) Cassie directed. (They may not follow us into shallow water.)

The two groups of sharks, evidently seeing what their prey planned to do, turned to intercept the dolphins before they could escape to shallower water. They were not quite as fast as the dolphins they were pursuing, but they were fast enough to make up a great deal of the distance.

With Marco leading the retreat – something he would be ashamed to recall later – the seven Animorphs in dolphin morphs powered their way back to the shore. The sharks turned to cut the dolphins off, moving more quickly than any of the Animorphs would have expected them to. In less time than it would have taken to state their situation aloud, the seven dolphins were surrounded by their fourteen aggressors.

(Focus on one!) Jake ordered, knowing what it took to deal with sharks from his previous experience with the killer fish. (Try to draw blood; the rest will attack whoever is injured!)

Obediently falling in with the rest of the Animorphs as they prepared to assault one of the sharks to distract the others, Marco couldn't help but feel that something was wrong. Something about this situation – even more than the fact of what they were about to face – gave him the chills. He got the feeling that these were _not_ normal sharks that they were about to face.

There was something wrong with the way they were moving; something he couldn't put into words, but something that made him want to keep his guard up all the same.

The shark Jake and the others had targeted, too caught up in the frenzy of the hunt, reacted too slowly to escape the dolphins that had suddenly decided to turn the tables on him. Jake rammed him with all the force his momentum had given him. One-by-one, Marco and the rest of the Animorphs did likewise, until the unfortunate Hammerhead was bleeding from his gills.

Trailing warm blood into the water; blood that would cause any normal group of sharks to turn on each other for food.

(Now's our chance! While they're in a feeding frenzy, let's get out of here!) Jake commanded.

Normal sharks, such as those the Animorphs – sans Slade, Shara, and Ax, of course – had faced once before, would have already broken off from their attack on the Animorphs to devour their fellow shark. Normal sharks would have torn their comrade to pieces for the merest promise of blood. Normal sharks, these were most assuredly not.

Ignoring what would have been an all-too-enticing temptation for any other group of sharks, the fourteen Hammerheads instead focused their attention on the seven dolphins and the single tiger shark that they were facing. On they came, lashing and churning the water with their bladelike tails ad they propelled themselves forward relentlessly. Each eagerly anticipating the taste of their dolphin prey.

(We have to break through and run!) Jake shouted, catching the attention of all the others before any of the Hammerheads could strike. (Bunch up! Bunch up in a wedge and we'll power our way through.)

(Don't stop for anything!) Rachel shouted.

(Let's just hope nothing stops us,) Shara muttered, not quite meaning to speak aloud.

The sharks, however, had seen what their adversaries had planed. They were already moving to cut them off. Turning to look behind them, Marco saw that the sharks had left some of their own behind to cut off any means of escape. It was then that he himself began to suspect that these sharks were not normal.

Something that they would find to be more apt than any of them would have expected.

(Keep going!) Jake urged, even as the sharks turned to attack their group.

The eight Animorphs continued on, swimming in a tight group even as the fourteen sharks broke formation and closed in on them from all sides; negating the effectiveness of their formation. Marco could all but count the teeth in their mouths, when they opened them in preparation to make a killing bite, and this frightened him more than anything. Shara, however, was beginning to have problems of an entirely different nature…

(Surface!) Marco shouted, coming to the notion through a burst of adrenaline-fueled thought.

(What?) Jake asked, confused.

(Sharks don't jump! Sharks do _not_ jump!) Marco shouted, not sure at that point whether he was trying to reassure the others more than himself.

When the sharks were almost upon them, the seven dolphins leaped. Powering into the air and out of the reach of the killer fish that had aimed to devour them, they swam on when they felt water surrounding their bodies once again. They had not come down so far away from the sharks as any of them might have wished.

Six dolphins kicked their tails as hard as they could in an effort to put as much distance between themselves and the sharks that were still pursuing them, but the seventh…

(Shara, what in the hell are you _doing_?!) Marco demanded.

Shara would have probably ignored him anyway, if she could have heard him over the roaring in her ears. Knowing that she needed to be back in her own body to be able to protect her newfound friends from the monsters that were assaulting them – and she wasn't going to fail the way she'd done with the others she'd cared about – Shara demorphed at a speed that made even Cassie seem slow.

Once she was back in her human body, and hardly even noticing the cold or the oppressive airlessness of the water around her, Shara closed her eyes and summoned up the power that had been buried deep inside her. Slumbering power that she had never accessed before, but which she knew how to use without even the rudimentary training that Slade had provided for her when he'd given her the morphing ability.

The cold water boiled around her, flashing into steam where it came into direct contact with the energy burning in her skin. Energy that was being utilized in a most interesting way: beneath the rosette light being generated by the interaction between the energy of her transformation and the environment around her, sections of black, organic-metal armor were literally _growing_ over Shara's body.

They started out from the circuit-designs imprinted into her body, directed by the changes that had been made to her physiology, and then quickly spread out to envelop her entire body in a quasi-impervious shell. This, however, was merely the under-armor. Merely that which would protect the joints and less vital parts of a Teknoman's body while still allowing them almost as much flexibility as an unarmored warrior would enjoy.

Layering itself over the under-armor, reinforcing it and giving the warrior wearing it a distinctive appearance, came the harder and thicker plates of colorful over-armor. The last pieces to form were the helmet and the faceplate. Unlike Slade's helmet, which gave him the appearance of a quasi-demonic insect, Shara's was more normal looking.

Drawing her weapon, Shara charged at the nearest of the sharks that were trying to attack them. Not being quite intelligent enough to realize that what it faced was far too much for any number of sharks to deal with, the Hammerhead continued on its course. It was the first one to die.

Shara's blade slammed into the Hammerhead's snout, and kept on going through the entire body without any appreciable loss in speed. In fact, Shara would later be heard to say that she had a more difficult time maneuvering in the water than she had dealing with the sharks.

The next two were dispatched in much the same way; cloven in half at the midsection or bisected when they foolishly tried to attack. The fourth and fifth, seeing the fate that was soon to be theirs, did what no normal sharks would have done: they turned tail and started to swim away.

Shara, however, was not about to let such dangerous creatures escape when they could still pose a viable threat to her friends. Her instincts differed from Slade's in that she was not as vicious as he would have been in her place. For all the blood that billowed around her, Shara's strikes were inhumanly precise; meant to cause the maximum amount of damage for the minimum amount of effort.

Once all of the sharks were dead, killed either by blood loss or beheading, Shara backed off and rejoined the other Animorphs.

(What was _that_?) Marco asked, not sure if he should be more shaken by watching the sharks – implacable killers that they were – be butchered by someone he'd never expected to have that kind of power, or pleased by the simple fact that those monsters had died without having the chance to butcher any of _them_.

(Nevermind that,) Jake said, though he was almost as unnerved by the slaughter he had just witnessed as any of the others; he hadn't known _anything_ could blithely slice up sharks the way Shara had just done. (Does anyone else hear that?)

All of the others, Shara included, tuned their hearing and paused for a moment to listen to what Jake had heard. _(It sounds like it's coming from somewhere behind us,)_ Shara said. _(I'm not completely certain; but if I had to guess, I'd say that the siren's coming from that Yeerk facility we came to spy on.)_

(Okay, so why are they broadcasting it?) Cassie asked sensibly.

_(Maybe they're trying to call the sharks back,)_ Shara speculated. _(They'd have no real way of knowing that the sharks ran into something they couldn't handle.)_

_You mean something like _you_?_ Marco thought but didn't say. Instead, bothered by what he was starting to see as his own cowardice, he said something else entirely: (We should go below, see what's trying to call them off.)

(I second that.)

It was Rachel's agreement, more than anything else, that convinced Marco that he'd just said exactly the wrong thing. But, there was no way for him to back out now without looking like even more of a coward than he probably already did. So he kept his mouth shut and surfaced to breathe with the rest of the Animorphs, excluding Ax.

Shara didn't need to surface to keep herself breathing, since her armor was designed to keep her alive even in the airlessness of space, but she breached the water all the same. Shedding her armor ten feet above the surface, she instantly lost her upward momentum and started to fall back into the ocean. Morphing even as she fell, Shara just managed to regain her dolphin form before she hit the water.


	23. Shadow Plays

Kicking hard to catch up with the others, Shara arrived just in time to see the nearly-transparent submarine scudding by twenty feet below them. It wasn't shaped like any normal sub that Shara – and, she suspected, any of the others – had ever seen before. In fact, it resembled a child's drawing of a manta ray.

Kind of simple, almost to the point of being crude, but it was still recognizable.

The oddest thing about the sub, aside from its basic design, was the fact that it was completely transparent. The only things that couldn't be seen through were the insides of the engines, the passengers, the furniture the passengers used, and the tools that were most likely used to keep the engines in top condition. There were three decks on the submarine below them, each as transparent as the sea around them, giving the odd illusion that the passengers in the submarine were standing and sitting and walking around in the water.

As for the passengers themselves… she could see the creatures that Cassie had described to her, and she could see that there were humans mixed in with the aliens on the submarine. She knew from Cassie's information that these weren't really humans at all. They were under the complete – or near enough that it didn't really matter – of the Yeerks in their heads.

They could, in fact, easily be considered even less human than her and Slade.

As he watched the Yeerks' quasi-transparent submarine pass by underneath them, carrying its crew of human and nonhuman Controllers, Marco wasn't seeing it so clearly as he otherwise might have. He noticed the large, tentacled, froglike alien sitting next to what was obviously the main seat of command on the submarine, but he wasn't really paying so much attention to it.

He couldn't help remembering the way Shara had butchered those sharks. She hadn't even seemed to have any trouble with it; it was like him kicking down a sandcastle, or Rachel shopping for fashion accessories: just something that came naturally to her. Something that she didn't really have to think about.

_That_ wasn't very comforting at all; to have someone with them who could kill with the kind of brutal efficiency that Shara had just displayed, someone for whom killing was clearly second nature.

_I wonder how she feels about that, _he thought briefly, then forgot about the thought entirely. This was because the person sitting in the command chair, the person who was in charge of the submarine – and a great deal more besides – had stood to stretch and look around. She was now staring almost directly at them.

Almost directly at _him_.

It took a great deal of his self-control to keep himself from calling out to the woman who was now looking almost directly into his eyes. He hadn't ever been more grateful to be morphed than he was now, facing her again.

(Visser One,) Rachel hissed angrily. (So the main creep _is_ here on Earth.)

He mostly ignored her, focusing instead on the submarine as it passed underneath them. Watching as _she_ sat calmly back in her seat and directed the submarine back into the concealed base. Back behind the hologram of a perfectly normal seabed.

(We should leave,) Jake said. (We've seen what we came here to, and I know they're probably going to notice those dead sharks sooner or later.)

(Yeah,) he said, though it took him a second or two to catch onto what Jake had been talking about; his mind had been… elsewhere.

(Let's head back to the island,) Jake directed gently. (We've done enough for one day.)


	24. Introspection

He followed as they all turned tail and swam back toward the island. His mind was still back on the woman commanding the sub; still stuck on the fact that his mother had returned to Earth, but was still his enemy. Sooner than he would have expected, but mostly owing to the fact that he hadn't been paying attention, Marco found himself beached.

Quickly demorphing from his now-cumbersome dolphin body, Marco sloshed out of the water not too far behind the others. Jake didn't even have to give the order before they all started morphing into their seagull forms, but he gave it anyway just so Slade wouldn't be confused. He tended to be really anal about getting orders before he did anything, in or out of a fight.

He might have thought that it was just the way the guy was, except for the way Shara looked at him when he did that. He'd never known Ness Carter, even as just someone he passed in the halls on the way to class, so it wasn't really like he could make too many assumptions about the way Slade was acting now.

Running at the ocean the way most of the others had done, Marco flapped and circled to gain altitude. In the air, he met up with the others, and they all wordlessly made their way back toward the city. He'd had some homework to do when he'd been sent home from school, and he wasn't really looking forward to it.

It wasn't nearly the same feeling he got when he thought about confronting his mother again, but it definitely wasn't looking forward to it by any stretch of the imagination. But still, it was something normal to do; maybe it would help take his mind off things.

When his house came back into view, Marco took a quick flight around to make sure there was no one who would notice and perhaps comment on a seagull flying into someone's house. Even if he _did_ live there when he wasn't busy trying to save the world from an alien invasion.

One of two that he knew about, but he didn't know just exactly what the Radam were capable of; still, judging by the way Shara had handled those sharks, they weren't the kind of creatures he'd want to mess around with.

Just his luck that they chose to invade _this_ planet.

Flopping down on his bed, Marco started demorphing as fast as he could. Concentrating on his normal body as hard as he could, he finished the demorph and sat on his bed. With the return of his human body and the responsibilities that came with it, he reluctantly fetched the book that he'd chosen to read for his English class.

He wasn't going to do it just yet, though. The fact that he was hungry notwithstanding, if he didn't make at least a token appearance in front of his dad, the older man was likely to call the police or something equally drastic. It was a nice change from the shell-shocked indifference he'd been dealing with before his father had made the decision to take charge of his life for the first time since his wife had "died", but it had its fair share of disadvantages.

Heading down the stairs to the living room, Marco was relieved to note that his father was nowhere in evidence. It would be much more simple to convince the man that he'd missed him coming in through the _front _door rather than through one of the upstairs windows if he wasn't in the living room to see his son walking _down_ the stairs.

He found the old man in the kitchen, standing next to the phone.

"Hey, Dad."

"Marco, hi," he said, grinning. "I was just going to come get you. So, what would you like for dinner?"

It took a fair amount of self-control for him not to make a face. "Anything but fish."

"You want some pizza?" his dad asked.

"Just make sure it doesn't have any anchovies," he said, then turned to leave.

He could hear his father's shout of confirmation as he made his way back up the stairs, so he felt better. It wasn't like he'd forgotten watching Shara butcher those sharks like any number of beef cattle – that was pretty much why he'd refused to eat anything fish-related for at least the rest of the day – but he was working to put it behind him.

Back in his room again, he decided to bite the metaphorical bullet and hunt down the book he'd chosen to read for his assignment. Finding the battered softcover under a dirty, faded gray sweatshirt that he'd tossed on top of his desk a few days ago, he stared at the cover.

The book itself was the first in a trilogy; it was also interminably long and Marco found himself wondering, not for the first time, just how he was going to manage to read the whole thing in the time he had left. He'd only picked the first book in the series, but even that was three times longer than any normal book had a right to be.

The only thing worse would have been if he'd picked one of Tom Clancy's books, which were about the same length or longer.

"What was I thinking, choosing a book this long?" he groaned rhetorically.

Given the fact that he'd had the entire previous month to read the book, he didn't have so much of an excuse as he might have had otherwise. Taking one more look at the imposing paper brick on his desk, Marco decided that he wasn't going to start reading that right now. Flopping down on his bed, groping for his headphones and settling them firmly over his ears.

Fumbling around for a few seconds, he found the remote control for his CD player and turned it on. He hadn't changed discs since four days ago, so he knew exactly what kind of music he would e getting.

"Bob Marley, mon," he implored, his voice muffled by the pillow over his face. "Help me out, mon."

The song playing at the moment, however, was not one that he would have ever chosen to listen to on his own. The strains of Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry" translated entirely too easily into "No Mother, No Cry" with the mood he was in.

"Great," he muttered, his annoyance at the world in general and his CD player in general muffed by his pillow. "Let's just wallow in complete and utter self-pity."

While it might have been true that no one had actually _called _him an out-and-out coward, he'd still been the first to turn tail and run at the first sight of sharks. And, while it was true that he'd had more than his fair share of bad experiences with those bloodthirsty, killer fish – up to and including being bitten nearly in half my a tiger shark – nothing could make him forget that _he_ and he alone and run away first.

Even watching Shara mercilessly butcher those killers – as satisfying as that sight had been – didn't make him feel better about the fact that'd he'd abandoned his friends to face a fate that, if not for the intervention of someone far more powerful than he could ever be, would have been deadly. The fact that no one had called him on his cowardice almost made it worse.

Not to mention all of the tumultuous feelings that seeing his mother again – knowing that the thing that lived in her head would kill him without a second thought if she ever found out what he was – had stirred up for him.

As horrific as it had been to have his mother die, or appear to die, anyway, there had at least been something of a finality to it. Death was an end, at least. It made sense, of a terrible sort, but it was still something that could be understood, taken in, and dealt with.

There were groups for people who had lost one or both parents to accidental death, and the shared pain was supposed to make it less. It didn't always seem to work, and he personally hated the idea of inviting people to pity him for any reason, but he knew that there were some people who would be comforted by the idea of sharing that kind of pain.

He just wasn't one of them; never had been, never would be.

Still, what they had was better than what he could have: there _was_ no support-group for people who's mothers had been enslaved by an alien presence in her head. There was no therapy for someone who knew – beyond all hope of doubt – that the thing that wore their mother's face would kill them without mercy if she ever had the chance.

Of course, it was more than possible that this was what Jake felt every time he sat down for a meal with Tom. Marco had never – and _would_ never – ask about something like that. It just wasn't in his nature, and he doubted Jake would be eager to discuss the situation in the first place. Neither of them were ones for discussing messy things like emotion with too much frequency or depth.

That was one of the things that made them so close.

Moving the pillow away from his eyes, Marco stared at the picture of his mother that he'd kept next to his bed every night since his mother had vanished. He still didn't know just who he wanted to see when he looked at that photo each night before he slept. He didn't know if it was the mother he had lost that he was seeing, or the one that he wanted – somehow – to rescue.

He just didn't know anymore.

Sometimes, he would fantasize about how and when he would rescue her from the Yeerks. How he would keep her locked up for the three days it would take for the Yeerk in her head to die. _Then what?_ He would always ask himself, _what will you do once Visser One is dead?_

He'd fought the Yeerks long enough to know that that wouldn't be the end of things. There wasn't a chance that they could get away with doing something that audacious and dangerous; the Yeerks would hunt them down for as long as their was a single Yeerk alive on Earth.

And, if he was ever caught and infested, that would be the end of the resistance. The Yeerks would know everything there was to know about Jake, and Rachel, and Cassie, and Tobias; even Ax, Slade and Shara wouldn't be safe…

"I am way too young to have to deal with this kind of stuff!" he shouted into his pillow.


	25. Runins

Then, getting the odd feeling that he wasnt quite as alone in his room as he had once been, Marco shoved the pillow off of his face. Sure enough, standing framed by the open door of his room, was his father. Mouthing the words "I knocked", the man made a gesture of having done that very thing, just in case his meaning had been at all unclear.

"Oh, hi," Marco stammered, yanking his headphones off. "Um, hi."

"Sorry for disturbing you," his dad said. "I just came to see if you wanted to watch the game with me."

__

Right, the game, Marco reminded himself. "Oh, the game. I really probably shouldnt. I have homework and stuff to do."

"Oh. I guess youre right," the older man said, turning and making to leave. He paused, seeming to think better of it. "You know, if theres anything bothering you, you can always talk to me. You do know that, right Marco?"

"Yeah," he couldnt; not with the kind of secrets he knew, the kind of enemies he had. Still, it was a nice sentiment. "I know, Dad."

"The games still on, if you want to come watch it with me," the older man said, over his shoulder as he turned to leave.

"Yeah," he muttered. "Call me when the pizza gets here!" he said more loudly.

"I will!" his father called back through the door.

"Real nice world you live in, Marco," he muttered.

There were things he couldnt tell the man; not only for the sake of his own privacy, but for the survival of his friends and that of the world in general. He couldnt tell the man what was really bothering him, or why hed been doing a fair bit worse in school than usual. Nothing about what was really happening in his life lately.

Honesty was out of the question, but companionship? He could still do that. He could march right down those stairs, sit himself down next to that old man, and watch the game with him.

"This aint happening," he said, looking over at the pile on his desk that concealed the book he was supposed to be reading. "Not tonight."

With those as parting words, Marco left his room to join his father in the den.

XX

Settling back into the rudimentary bed that she shared with her brother, Shara mulled over what had happened today. And, how she felt about what had happened. She knew she probably should have been feeling at least something after the way she had slaughtered those sharks, but she really didnt. They had been a threat to her comrades, and now they werent.

It was those thoughts, more than even the transformation she had managed to trigger, that let her know just how much she too had changed from what she had once been. Sure, she probably wouldnt have been feeling precisely _guilty_ for protecting the lives of her friends by killing off a few bloodthirsty, killer fish, but she would have at least felt _something_. She hadnt been a sociopath, after all.

Shara didnt like to think that she might be becoming one, either.

Stretching out and laying down beside her brother, Shara tried to put those troubling thoughts out of her mind. Eventually successful, she was able to fall asleep.

XX

Shara woke up the next morning to the normal routine of eating and hiding; supplemented by watching and waiting for Cassies father to leave the barn so they could move around more freely. The times that he did leave the barn unattended were few and far between, but when he did leave, he was gone for long enough that they could get out of the hayloft and stretch their legs if they were so inclined.

Slade never seemed to want to, so she left him to stay up in the loft while she took time to learn the layout of what was to be their for lack of a better term home for the foreseeable future. She was eventually able to find out that Cassies father left the house entirely at regular intervals. Cassie had already provided a packed, non-perishable lunch for her and Slade, so Shara wasnt so concerned about eating when she went out.

She wanted to know the lay of the land, just what was where and how she could get to it.

Of course, she still had to be careful where she walked, since being invisible didnt in any way make her lighter than she was before. Grass and mud were especially troublesome for her. Both since they would reveal her presence to anyone who was looking, and because the mud would stick to her feet. She couldnt avoid the grass entirely, not with where she was and where she wanted to go, but the mud wasnt that hard to spot.

Even when she completely lacked color vision.

Studying the door in front of her, Shara reached out and turned the knob slightly. She was mildly surprised to find that it was unlocked. But, since she could hear a car pulling back into the driveway at the front of the house, she had to cut her explorations short. She knew Cassies father a gentle-seeming man named Walter wouldnt be able to see her no matter how hard he tried, but that didnt mean that he couldnt see her tracks in the grass.

Or that he couldnt hear her if she made too much noise.

Quickly but carefully making her way back to the barn, Shara climbed the ladder and moved back behind the hay-bales that Cassie had set up to conceal them while they slept, or even while they were awake and waiting for everyone else to go to sleep so that they could move around with at least some amount of freedom.

Even if it _was_ a lot smaller than what she had been used to.

Settling herself back down next to Slade, who she couldnt help but notice was sleeping again, Shara wondered just when she would manage to get a look inside that house. There would be ample time for her to explore the house later; Cassies father obviously had things that kept him away from the place, even if they _could_ be kind of unpredictable.

There were just some things that she wasnt willing to do without, like a hot shower and an actual toilet.

XX

The school day had passed, with its usual interminable slowness, and now all he wanted to do was get the heck out of there. Jake had said that they were all going to meet in the woods to discuss what they were going to do next; not that he had many doubts about what _he_ wanted to do, but those were his own reasons and he wasnt very inclined to share them.

Telling the usual story to his dad, Marco headed out to meet up with Jake so they could morph and head over to Cassies place together. Once they were both in the air and heading that way, Marco let his control slacken just the slightest bit. He still kept enough to be able to direct the bird he was in to go where he wanted it to, but he wasnt in _complete_ control anymore.

He thought he saw some of the other Animorphs on their way to the barn, but those could just as easily been normal birds.

Flying over the barn itself, he could see a raven and a swallow-tailed kite flapping their way out of the haylofts large window. Jake had probably contacted them and told those two where the rest of the group was going to be meeting, and Slades obsessive-to-the-point-of-insanity loyalist tendencies had done the rest. There were times he thought that Slade needed to grow a spine, and then he would remember what _Shara_ had done to those sharks

Maybe it was better that Slade _didnt _act on his own, after all.

When he saw another group of birds swooping and diving toward the forest floor, Marco knew that it had to be the rest of the Animorphs. Especially since there were six of them, and each one corresponded to the morphs that one of the others used. Following on the tail feathers of the other Animorphs as they swooped and spiraled toward the ground, Marco wondered for a moment what the consensus after this meeting would be.

Folding his wings and diving through the trees after the others, he opened his wings and flapped them hard to absorb the remaining momentum from his dive. The others, even Jake, had all landed and started demorphing, so he turned away from them and landed to start his own demorph. The last thing he wanted to see was the others demorphing; especially through the eyes of an Osprey.

Once he had fully demorphed, he headed over to meet with the others. Cassie was the one who started the conversation.


	26. Impossibilities

"Those were _not_ normal sharks," she pointed out. "Somehow they were being controlled, directed. No normal sharks would have been working in a pack like that, and they _never_ would have been able to resist going into a feeding-frenzy after they had scented blood."

"Do you think they could be Controllers?" Rachel asked. "Weve seen the Yeerks making Controllers out of horses."

(No,) Ax said. (Cassie has shown me pictures of the internal structures of the internal structures of a shark. There is no room inside the creatures brain for a Yeerk. They would also be hampered by the lack of an ear-canal.)

"They could be using some sort of implants," he suggested. "Some kind of electrodes or something."

(Well, its clear that they were guarding that facility,) Tobias mused. (Though I kind of wonder what the Yeerks did when they found the corpses of those sharks.)

He saw Shara sort of cringe after that; it wasnt that obvious to even him, so he doubted that anyone else had noticed it.

"I dont know what the Yeerks are doing, but I think its pretty obvious what _we_ should be doing," he said. "We need to be thinking of ways to get inside that facility."

Jake gave him a sideways look, complete with a subtly raised eyebrow that Marco interpreted as a slight admonishment. They both knew that he had more personal reasons for wanting to know what was going on inside that facility than he had shared with the others. He shook his head subtly; no, he still wasnt going to say anything about what had happened to his mother.

Not now, and with any luck, not ever.

Jake subsided with an annoyed sort of shrug; he wasnt going to make a scene, but he clearly wasnt happy.

"I agree: we have to go back there," Jake said. "Those Leerans that Erek talked about sound dangerous. We absolutely cannot have some psychic Controllers running around."

"Do you think that frog-looking thing on the sub was a Leeran?" Cassie asked, turning to Ax.

(Yes. Probably,) the Andalite amended, sounding slightly uncomfortable. (I havent exactly memorized the _Encyclopedia of Galactic Life-forms_.)

"Where would you go to pick up that encyclopedia?" Marco asked, trying to lighten his own mood. "Do you think they have it at the local library?"

(The _real_ question we should be asking, is just how were going to go a look inside that complex,) Tobias broke in.

"You arent going to like the answer," Marco muttered; he already didnt.

Everyone, save for Slade and Ax, laughed.

"We have to think about going Hammerhead," Cassie said, taking up the thread of the original conversation. "Those guard sharks went after our dolphins, and even Axs tiger shark. My guess is that theyll go after anything that isnt a Hammerhead. And, we dont have any Hammerheads at The Gardens. However, there _are _Hammerheads at Ocean World. They have a big shark tank. I called them, and found out that they do have a big Hammerhead: fourteen feet long."

"Um, excuse me," Marco piped up, visions of messy dismemberment dancing in his head. "But has anyone considered the fact that we all have to be in our _own_ _bodies_ when we acquire this giant shark of yours?"

"Thats not so much of a problem," Shara said, speaking for the first time since they had all met up. "Im sure I could hold the shark still long enough for all of you to acquire it."

"But what about you?" Rachel asked, even as Marco berated himself for cowardice; if Shara hadnt been there to distract everyone

"I could hold it steady for her when she needs it," Marco volunteered, not wanting the others to notice how hed been so eager to run away when they faced the sharks for the first time. "After all, whos worked up over some little old sharks?"

"You are," Rachel said, with her usual tact.

Cheeks burning, Marco turned away to look at some ants that were crawling up the trunk of a nearby tree. Shara, feeling as if she should go and talk with him but not knowing what to say, simply stood and watched.

"Wed have to go at night," Cassie practically. "Tonight would be best, I think. And, of course, we still have school tomorrow."

"Forget school," Marco said gruffly, shoving his emotions aside so he wouldnt have to deal with them for awhile. "Theres an assembly last period, anyway. We can bail out early and no one will even care; those of us who _go_ to school, that is," he said, smirking at the four whod escaped it in one way or another. "Thatll leave us plenty of time to fly out to the island."

Jake nodded. "Okay: Ocean World tonight. Well head out to the island tomorrow after school. Well need some good excuses ready for our parents in case we run late. I cant get grounded again or my dad might start looking more closely at what Ive actually been doing."

There was a general agreement on that point, so the group broke up to go their separate ways until the time came for them to carry out the mission.


	27. Surprise

Shara, as she winged her way back into the air following her brother and Cassie, found her attention turning back to Marco. While it was true that she hadnt known what to say to him while he was surrounded by the other Animorphs, and she still didnt quite know how to make him feel better after what hed obviously been going through. She wasnt completely sure, but it seemed that his problem stemmed from the sharks they had faced earlier.

(Hey, Marco?)

(Yeah?)

(You know, if you ever want to talk to me about anything, Im right here.)

(What would we have to talk about?) he asked, sounding genuinely curious.

(Maybe we could talk about the things that seem to be bothering you,) she suggested amicably.

(Nothings bothering me,) he said, a bit too quickly. (I mean, why would you think anythings bothering me?)

(Ah, against the Guy Code to talk about, huh?)

(Who told you about the Code?) Marco demanded good-naturedly.

(I lived with my four brothers,) she said, chuckling. (Believe me, I _know_ about the Guy Code.)

Marco laughed a bit, and she laughed with him; knowing beyond all doubt that that was all she was going to get out of him. It was kind of sad, the way he seemed to think he had to keep all of when he was feeling inside; but it was his business if he did, and she wasnt going to pry any farther.

To say nothing of how rude it would be, Shara didnt want to drive a wedge between herself and the rest of the Animorphs. They seemed to be a pretty close-knit group, and she knew that they would need that kind of camaraderie to have a chance of dealing with the Yeerks.

She and Slade were the only ones who really had a chance in hell of dealing with the Radam.

XX

Later that night, when all of the normal day-to-day routines had been handled and excuses made for those who needed them the eight Animorphs winged their way toward Ocean World. Marco, whose father had said to call him if he needed a ride, flew in the rough middle of the group. He was still mulling over what Shara had said to him, mildly surprised at the way she had been so willing to let him confide in her; they hadnt even known each other for a week.

It was also a startling contrast to the way she had acted in the fight with the sharks; but she really didnt seem to want to think about that, so he wasnt going to bring up the issue. It was fair, after the way shed dropped the issue of his mom, after all. Even if she hadnt known what she was asking, she still hadnt been ready to push.

That meant something.

As their group closed in on Ocean World, Marco pushed the thoughts of Shara, the shark, and what his mother and/or Visser One were doing right now, out of his mind so that he would be able to focus when the time came.

All eight of them tucked their wings and dove toward the ground, landing and starting to demorph. As he grew from a tiny seagull into a fairly average-sized if _slightly_ shorter than normal human, Marco started to feel slightly uneasy. This was a marked difference from the relief he usually felt she coming out of morphs that size or smaller.

Still, with the gloom and the shadows all around them, it was blatantly obvious that they werent supposed to be here. Plus, the lack of ambient light made it really easy to see that both Slade and Sharas eyes were glowing. They looked eerily like cats, only their eyes glowed in two distinct colors.

Slades green wasnt that bad, but hed never seen a cat with _pink_ eyes before.


	28. Hunted

"I wish I knew how we were planning to do this," Cassie whispered, leading the way to the shark tank. "Sharks are not dolphins. I mean, these sharks _are_ well-fed, but they still arent exactly pets."

"Shark-petting," Marco mused, with an air of someone who was thinking deeply. "Add that to a dolphin rodeo, and wed have a whole new ESPN show."

No one laughed; Shara turned to look at him with a slightly raised eyebrow, and Jake smirked. Jakes smirk wasnt a happy smirk, and Shara looked more worried than anything. Marco himself, though he noticed these expressions of concern, was fixated on the shark that he would soon be facing. He didnt like the idea at all; even if Shara was going to be there, they would all still have to _touch_ the shark.

After what had happened even the fact that Shara could slice up any shark that got near them in the time that it would take one of the others to blink three times, and the fact that they had Slade with them, wasnt nearly as reassuring as he thought it would be before he had come to the place where he would have to actually _touch_ a shark.

"I have an idea," Rachel piped up. "The shark doesnt have to be _conscious_ for us to acquire it, right? So we use our dolphin morphs; with seven of us in the tank with it, it shouldnt be too hard to get the DNA we need from that thing."

"So, we should just go and beat some poor shark half to death?" Cassie demanded, shocked. "When its not even attacking us?"

Rachel spread her hands in a placating gesture. "Its a shark, Cassie. A _shark_. People eat sharks."

"And vice versa," Marco added, with a hint of morbid amusement.

"It beats just jumping into the tank with it," Jake said. "Or having Shara rip it out of the water and hold it for us the way she offered. Theres no way of knowing how long something that big could survive out of water. And wed need time for all of us to get our hands on it."

Cassie looked like she was going to say something, but then she stopped. Clenching her jaw firmly shut, the way she tended to do when she disapproved of something but didnt have any convincing counter-arguments, she continued on her way into the park.

"Sharks can _all_ die as far as Im concerned," Marco said with a laugh, though he hadnt been making a joke; after what theyd done to him

(Theyre just predators being predators,) Tobias said, speaking for the first time since they had arrived. (They arent evil. Just hungry.)

"So youre on Cassies side?" Marco asked, though he kind of doubted it; Tobias had changed since hed been trapped as a hawk, and more since hed started living like one.

(No. Kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten. Thats the predators law; I know. I _am_ a predator. I say we do what we have to do, to make sure none of us gets killed.)

"Fine," Cassie snapped. "Lets just get this over with."

Making their way over to the large fish tanks, the eight of them were silent save for the slapping of bare feet and the click of unshod hooves. The three large, oval fish tanks sat in front of them, looking oddly like backyard swimming pools at their currant distance.

Shara and Slade had instinctively taken up guard positions on the edges of the group, using their far superior night-vision to search the darkened recesses of the park for anyone or anything that might present a problem to their lesser-equipped allies as they all moved along the pathway. Passing by the tended bushes that lined the path, they continued to watch for danger.

Tobias, in the trees that had been planted to give shade during the daylight hours, was the first to see their next obstacle. The two siblings, however, had heard them just before

(Someones coming!) he shouted.

XX

Everything was black and white; shades of gray, really, painted in nice sharp lines so that she could see every movement that her prey made. That was what he was, now; by threatening her friends, he had made himself her enemy. And enemies like this were nothing more than prey.

He made a few noises, something that she thought she might have recognized at one point. At the moment, however, it was nothing more than the yelping of her prey.

Gripping her lancer tightly with both hands, she rammed it deep into the belly of her prey. Driving upward, she stopped just below the shoulder. Her prey was already mortally wounded. Cutting it open would only make a mess, and she was not overly fond of messes.

XX

Watching in horror as the two guards they had to be guards, because no one else would be there at this time of night with a gun were unceremoniously butchered by two invisible people that had to be Slade and Shara, Jake shuddered. Hed seen them taking up positions on the outside of the group, but he hadnt thought much of it at the time. Slade had always been a bit intense, but even after seeing what Shara had done to those sharks

Still, hed never expected them to actually _kill_ anyone. But, as the two corpses fell to the ground, two figures became visible in the gloom of the empty wildlife park. The one on the right was revealed to be Slade, holding a wicked-looking, jagged-edged short spear in his right hand, and the back of the shirt that the man he had just killed had been wearing in his left. Hed seemingly cleaved right through the torso below the armpits, but it didnt look like hed stopped there.

The reason for Jakes conclusion, morbid as it was, was that the mans arms had both been cleanly severed from his body.


	29. Mind and Heart

The sound of metal clattering to the ground, along with the softer sound of something heavy falling, drew his attention. He could just see Shara, leaning over the bushes on the left side of the pathway. He wondered for a moment what she was doing, before the sound of vomiting reached his ears.

No one else seemed to know what to do in this situation; he didnt know much better than them, but he knew that a leader had to _look_ like he always had the answers to any problem that came up. And, more than that, he had to take care of the people that followed him.

Walking over to the place where Shara still crouched, spitting to get the taste of vomit out of her mouth, Jake put his hand on her back. Her head snapped around, pinning him with the gaze of her eerily glowing pink eyes. He tried not to flinch; hed seen Slades eyes glowing green, and hed seen the color of Sharas own eyes in daylight.

The combination of the two shouldnt have been so surprising to him as it was.

Shoving all of that aside, Jake strode over to Shara and gently laid his right hand on her back. When she looked up at him, her face stricken and her eyes wet, he wasnt surprised that the next thing she did was to bury her face in his chest and sob. Hed have honestly been shocked if shed done anything else.

Even with everything else that he and the other Animorphs had done during their battle against the Yeerks, they had tried to keep the human casualties to the absolute minimum. Still, Jake thought that he might have been starting to understand why Shara acted the way she did.

Hed been trying to forget, or at least ignore, the differences between Slade, Shara, and the other Animorphs. Hed tried to think of them as just another part of the Animorphs, albeit with some useful skills that had often saved him and the others from getting into trouble. But, something like this it hammered home the fact that neither Slade nor Shara were quite who they had been before the Radam had gotten to them.

They werent really even human anymore; a fact that was made abundantly clear by the fact that their eyes glowed in low light, the sheer speed at which they could move, and the sheer, uncaring ruthlessness that they had both displayed when they killed those guards. Even though Shara had been shocked by her own actions, it still didnt change what she did.

It just made her actions easier to understand; she had her and Slade both had acted to protect the rest of them from something that she didnt think they could handle. Her heart was in the right place, it was just that her methods were a bit harsh. Then again, given what he had seen when Starfire had come to him

Stroking her hair, the way his mother did for him when he was sick, Jake felt Shara trying to pull away. Loosening his grip, he let her step away to wipe at her eyes.

"Thanks," she said with a wan smile.

"Are you sure youre all right?" he asked; something like that couldnt have been easy to get over.

"I think I will be," she looked down. "Eventually; maybe."

XXX

She thought it was very kind, the way that Jake was trying to help her. Still, that didnt change the fact that she had just killed another human being with the same lack of reaction that would normally have accompanied eating a handful of potato chips. It scared her, the way she could be so cold-blooded.

Slade didnt seem to care, but that only served to reinforce the gulf that now separated the two of them. Ness would have been horrified if hed done something like that. But all Slade did was to pick up the corpses and ask what Jake wanted him to do with them.

"Heres an idea," Marco said, looking fairly unnerved and carefully averting his eyes from the corpses themselves. "Why dont we dump them in the shark tank?"

She couldnt really blame him; she was trying to do that, too.

"The slightest smell of blood would drive any normal shark into a feeding-frenzy," Cassie said, and she looked like she was trying to avoid the sight of Slade entirely.

"Okay, _another_ shark tank, then," Marco said. "You guys have to know that we cant just leave those bodies out to rot. Someone would be bound to notice and start asking questions. Especially considering the fact that I dont know of any knives that can cut through bone that easily, and Slades probably gotten fingerprints all over both of them by now."

"Slade, go dump those two in the shark tank," Jake said, with obvious reluctance. "Make sure its not the one with the Hammerheads."

"Yes, Jake," Slade said calmly.

This was one of the few times that Shara found herself _grateful_ for the fact that Slade couldnt remember who he had once been. Her brother would have hated himself if hed been the one to kill that man. Just like she hated herself now. She could only hope that no one else would try accosting them while they were here; Shara honestly didnt know if she would be able to control herself.

Of course, it wasnt like she had done such a bang-up job this time


	30. Complication

As they all made their way towards the Hammerheads tank, Marco couldnt help darting glances at Slade when the older boy wasnt looking. Slade was almost a shark himself, when it all came down to it, and Marco couldnt help wondering what that must be like. To be so ruthless, so completely without emotion, that you could kill a guy just for surprising you on a dark night.

He knew that none of the others not even Shara, who had done the same as Slade when she was confronted were quite comfortable with Slade, now that he had shown just what he was willing to do to keep both them and himself safe. Still, to know that you were able to act when the time came, regardless of any sentiment that you might be feeling it was an attractive possibility. Especially considering what he was going to be facing soon

Pushing those thoughts out of his mind, Marco followed the others up the stairs that lead to the top of the shark tank. The one with the Hammerhead in it; the one that Slade _hadnt_ just dumped a pair of corpses into. Looking down at the killer fish, the one that was almost identical to the ones that Shara had killed only a few days ago, Marco found that he was not even one iota less afraid of the thing.

It probably had a lot to do with the fact that, even in spite of the memories he was drawing on to try to bolster his confidence, _he_ hadnt been the one that had killed those sharks.

"All right," Jake said, and Marco could hear the faint reluctance in his voice. "Shara, you said youd hold the shark for us?"

"I will," she said, sounding like she had mostly recovered from the whole stabbing thing.

"Well, go in and hold it, then," Jake said, obviously trying to sound gentle.

"All right."

Without another word, Shara dove into the water and there was a dazzling flash of pink light. Luckily for them, most of it was contained by the pool, and a fair amount was muted by the water. When it had cleared, Marco turned back to look into the shark tank as best he could.

He could see two figures moving around in the darkness of the water, and he could almost pick out which one was smaller, but he couldnt really tell in the absence of light. After about a minute of waiting, there was a larger splash and Shara unceremoniously emerged from the tank. She had the shark held above her head, with her right hand gripping the one of the things pectoral fins, and her left wrapped around its tail.

"Could you all just hurry up and touch this thing?" she asked, sounding worried but not strained at all. "I dont know how long this thing can survive outside the water."

The thing was thrashing around like crazy, probably using up most of the stored oxygen in its body, and Marco couldnt help but feel a bit of vindictive pleasure in seeing one of the monsters that had haunted his nightmares being so helpless in front of him. Walking over to touch the side of the no longer so enthusiastically thrashing shark, Marco concentrated on absorbing the DNA of the killer fish under his hand. Hed been wondering what it would be like to be so emotionless, and now he was going to find out

But later; there was still the matter of getting all of them back home those of them that still had a home to go to, anyway and there probably wouldnt be time to test out the morph before they all needed to use it.

__

Still Cutting off that train of thought before it could really get going, Marco looked around at the others. Most of them seemed like they had gotten what they needed hed even caught a glimpse of Tobias fluttering down from the trees to take his own sample of Essence of Hammerhead and he was just starting to wonder when Shara would take her own sample, when Jake spoke up.

"All right, Shara," he said, doing that whole commanding thing that he claimed to dislike so much. "Weve all gotten our samples, so you can put that thing back in the tank and take yours now."

"Actually, Ive already gotten my DNA sample, Jake."

"How?" Jake asked, sounding more curious than skeptical.

A shrug of armored shoulders. "I happened to land near the tail when I dove into the water, so I just grabbed it and held on," she said, dropping the shark neatly back into the tank.

"Maybe you should jump back in the tank, or turn invisible or something before you take that armor off," he suggested, knowing that bright lights in a closed park were sure to attract the kind of attention they really didnt need right now.

"Given the choice, I think Ill go with the second option," Shara said wryly, even as she slowly faded from sight.

XXX

Now that they had all managed to acquire the DNA they needed, though he wished that those guards hadnt gotten involved, Jake suggested to the others that they should morph back into seagulls and leave. There was a general consensus on the idea even from Shara, who was still invisible for some reason and so they all gathered together and started to morph.

As Shara lost her human form, she also clearly lost the ability to remain invisible. Once the last of the Animorphs became fully seagull, Jake started his running takeoff and heard the others following his lead.

XXX

When they were all back in the air again, Shara wondered for a moment just what the staff of the park would do once they found those corpses in the shark tank. Then, forcibly pushing those morbid thoughts out of her mind, she decided to ask Cassie about the small problem that she had just found out she had.

(Cassie, do you think you could find me another morphing outfit?)

(Why? I thought you liked the one I gave you,) the other girl said, sounding confused.

(I did like it,) she said, feeling weirdly embarrassed but pressing on in spite of that. (Its just that one kind of evaporated when I transformed that second time.)

(What?) Cassie sounded shocked; Shara didnt blame her. (How could that have happened?)

(When I figure that out, Ill be sure to tell you,) she said. (Im still wondering why it _didnt_ happen that time I transformed in the water.)


	31. Bound for home

(Yeah,) Cassie said, as if she was surprised by that, too. (I didnt really think about that. Do you think there was something different that you were thinking when you transformed then, as opposed to when you transformed just now?)

(Aside from the fact that I was out in the open ocean as opposed to diving into an oversized fish tank?) she asked, only semi-serious. (I dont really know, myself.)

(Well, there would have had to be _something_, I think,) Cassie said, sounding like she was trying to think of what that very thing might be. (I mean, otherwise you probably would have ended up naked both times.)

(I _really_ dont want to think about that,) she said, chuckling from sheer embarrassment at the very idea.

(Yeah,) Cassie said, chuckling a bit herself. (Thats why we started training ourselves to morph clothes in the first place.)

(Maybe something like that could help me, do you think?)

(I dont know,) Cassie said dubiously. (When we tried to _morph_ clothes, they usually just ended up falling off; the only times we ended up losing them was when someone got careless and tried to morph something bigger than ourselves without taking them off first. Even then, they would only rip, not disintegrate.)

(Okay, so maybe that was a bad idea,) she said; not particularly relishing the prospect of learning something like that by trial-and-error, but knowing that it was probably her only option.

(Well, I think I could find some old clothes you could work with in the Give Away box,) Cassie said. (I dont think it would be fair if you ended up having to get new clothes each time you had to use that transformation of yours.)

(I think that would be a little too embarrassing even for me,) she said, laughing in mildly strained good-humor.

(Yeah,) Cassie said, chuckling softly. (Ill help you with it in the afternoon, after school, or after weve finished this next mission, whichever comes first, all right?)

(Thats fine,) she said, genuinely grateful for the consideration. (Thanks.)

They were silent the rest of the way back, since there wasnt really that much they could say after what had happened and she didnt really want to think about that anymore and so Shara focused on getting herself back to the barn. It wasnt home, but it came as close as it could.

XXX

Having tried and failed to draw his errant Hunter back to him, Darkon immersed himself in the workings of his teknopods. While he was not going to allow one of his Hunter Teknomen to run free, he had to know if something like this was likely to happen again. He would make preparations regardless, but it would be useful information in any case.

He could not afford to take chances, now that it was clear that someone had indeed been tampering with his plants; one failure could have been classed as the consequences of his crop acclimating to this alien soil, but two failures of the same type made it abundantly clear that someone was acting against him. Who, he didnt know, but he was going to ensure that their little ploy failed.

The first thing he was going to do was order the pods to take deeper root and start growing a crop of Galia; Gaurugana in particular. He would also begin cultivating a select crop of Taranthi. All of this would, of course, draw off too much energy for him to create another group of Teknomen, but it was a small price to pay to see that none of his other warriors were stolen from him the way that Ness Carter and his sister had been.

He was also going to make a far more concerted effort to draw the little Carter girl back to him so that he could complete her transformation into a proper Hunter Teknoman. The Carter boy was not so much of an issue; he was an Enforcer, bred and conditioned to follow orders without question. He would be useless without a Warlord to command him.

He would likely return even before the girl herself had been drawn back into their ranks.

XXX

The next day, Marco found that there was a front-page headline about the two missing guards from Ocean World. The official story was about some kind of mysterious disappearance, and Marco couldnt help wondering just what they would be reporting once they actually managed to find the corpses of those guards. Or if there would be anything _left_ to find once those sharks were done with them.

There was even a TV news report on CNN; they sent a camera crew and some reporters over there, in spite of the fact that there hadnt been anything much to find.

When he finally made it to the end of the first day back to school, he handed in the report that he had banged together while he was riding on the bus. Of course, it had nothing at all to do with the book that hed been assigned to read, but he was hoping that no one would pick up on that.

Finally heading home after what felt like an eternity, Marco plopped himself down on the couch and picked up the remote. He was in the mood to find something mindless and veg out for awhile, which was what he was going to do until either his dad kicked him out, or his butt fell asleep.

Whichever came first.

XXX

Settling back down in the hayloft after a day of nothing much happening though she _had_ managed to get in a shower, which she had enjoyed immensely Shara looked over the dozing form of her brother, before yawning widely and settling herself down to sleep. Just as she was starting to drift off, though, Shara felt a strong compulsion attempting to take hold of her mind.

Walling her mind off with her telepathic powers, she hurriedly turned to check on Slade. He would obviously be more susceptible to these kinds of things, given that he was obviously so much more far-gone than her in terms of what the Radam had done to them. But no; oddly enough, Slade seemed to be sleeping peacefully. She would have stopped to think about that, maybe wondered just why that was happening, but the psychic force hammering away at her defenses left no time for those kinds of questions to be posed; let alone pondered.

She knew that it had to be Darkon attacking her like this; no one else knew she existed, and none of the Animorphs had this kind of power. She knew the why and the who, and even had a fairly good idea about the how. None of that changed the fact that she was going to resist until he either gave up or shattered her mind trying.

She knew from her experience that Darkon wouldnt bother with her if he couldnt make immediate use of her body; this was another way to deny him victory, though she personally hoped that things wouldnt come to that.

Thankfully, after a few more attempts at breaking through her hardened mental defenses, Darkon withdrew. She knew his kind too well now to believe that she had won anything but the most temporary, transient of victories, but it was enough for her to sleep. That would have to be enough at this point.

XXX

The little female was apparently stronger than he himself had given her credit for. In a way this was good; strength of mind was what set Hunters apart from their larger, bulkier counterparts. The girl was truly one of the stronger minds it had been his pleasure to encounter. What made that strength such an annoyance was the fact that it was not being put to use in the service of the empire that they were both a part of.

He could see now that it would take a bit more time for him to get the little quasi-human to return to her proper place. Hammering at her mental defenses constantly, the way he had once thought to do, would only drive her to strengthen them. He would have to employ other measures to get his lost Hunter back.


	32. Indolence

After a bit of fitful sleep, during which she had been subconsciously preparing herself to fight off Darkons mental attacks as best she could, Shara had finally managed to get some real sleep. Waking up oddly refreshed for all that shed had to defend herself from the night before, she stretched and looked over at Slade. He was still sleeping as deeply as he had been the night before.

For a moment she wondered why Darkon hadnt tried to attack him, since he would have been far more vulnerable to those kinds of attacks considering that he had been subject to a much higher degree of the Radams mental reconditioning than she had; then, deciding that trying to understand the motivations of a Tekno-Warlord would only give her a headache.

Especially considering the fact that she didnt really _want_ to understand them.

Leaning back against the far wall of the barn, Shara listened to her stomach growl and wondered when her brother was going to wake up. Cassie usually came about half an hour after Shara herself had woken up thanks, she thought, to the internal alarm shed developed from having to get into the bathroom before any of her brothers when they were getting ready for school so she knew that their breakfast wouldnt be here for a bit longer. Slade, conversely, seemed to want to sleep for as long as he possibly could. Which was yet another difference from the person hed once been; Ness would always be up and banging on the bathroom door while she was inside.

It had been sort of a running joke between them; no matter how early she got up to beat the morning rush, Ness would always be up and banging on the door not soon after she had gotten inside. It had gotten to the point where she was calling him a walking bladder, with at least some degree of annoyance.

Ness gentle good-humor over the whole thing had really helped to defuse her aggravation, though. There were times she missed that; times when she didnt know just what she would do now that the whole of her family was for all intents and purposes dead. She tried not to think about it so much, but it was hard not to when the person who had once been her brother was sleeping right beside her every night.

Finally, Cassie made her way into the barn, just as Slade stirred and began to wake up. That was the way it had always seemed to be; maybe Slade felt comfortable around Cassie, or maybe hed just adapted his sleeping schedule to suit hers. Either way, he always seemed to just be waking up when she came in.

"Good morning, you two," Cassie said, as she climbed up the last few rungs of the ladder into the hayloft.

"Good morning, Cassie," she said, as Slade mumbled something that might have been a greeting, or might have been a stifled yawn. "Im afraid my brothers not quite up to greeting you properly this morning, so well have to try again later."

Cassie laughed, even as the boy in question leaned his head on her shoulder and dozed a bit. Slade always seemed to be sleeping during the day, but since Cassie didnt seem to be too worried about it and she, as odd as it was to think about that sometimes, had known Slade for a lot longer than Shara herself had shed made up her mind not to worry too much about it, either. There were times that all _she_ wanted was to lay down, curl up, and sleep, too.

It probably had something to do with what had happened to them, she figured; a lot of things seemed to be different after that.


	33. Working it out

"I thought up a way that I might be able to help you with the problems youve been having," Cassie said, darting a glance at Slade.

Shara nodded, her mouth too full of dry granola to make any kind of sense if shed tried to talk. She also had enough manners to know that not everyone wanted to see what shed just been chewing. Once shed finished with the food, with the roof of her mouth feeling like shed just given it a "light" scrubbing with steel wool, which was one of the things she disliked about eating granola, she smiled.

"Thanks," she said. "So, what did you think of?" she asked, as Slade finished his food and leaned back against the wall.

"I thought I might well, that you might let me acquire you, so I can morph you and maybe find out whats going on," Cassie said, sounding uncertain but slightly determined.

"I think that could work," she said, handing Cassie the empty container.

"All right, then," Cassie said, standing up and tucking the pair of empty containers into the bag slung over her arm. "Ill just put these back in the house, and then Ill be right back."

"Ill see you then," Shara said. "Thanks again for helping me with this, by the way."

"Youre welcome," Cassie answered, before she turned and started climbing down the ladder. "See you in a minute."

Leaving Slade to sleep off whatever kind of food or Radam, but she really didnt like to think about _that _ related issue he was dealing with, she leaned back against the wall that he had curled up at the base of and closed her own eyes. She wasnt nearly as tired as her brother, but there were still times that all she wanted to do was have a little time to close her eyes and rest for a bit. That seemed to be pretty much any time she had more than a couple minutes to herself, now that she thought about it.

Shara wasnt sure that she liked the implications of that.

Just as she was starting to worry that she might be affected more by the Radams physical reconditioning than shed thought at first, Cassie came back into the barn. Freed of those dark musings by the prospect of figuring out just what had happened to her clothes last night, Shara stood up and headed for the ladder. Climbing down to meet Cassie on the main floor of the barn, she saw that the other girl was carrying a bag over her arm again.

"These were all the clothes in the Give Away box that I could find that would fit you," she said, smiling. "Theyre mine, so theyll still be a little baggy."

"Better yours than your dads," she laughed, remembering what Slade had told her.

"Thats true," Cassie said with a chuckle.

"So, youre probably going to want to acquire me first, right?" Shara asked, holding out her hand.

"Thats the idea," Cassie said, reaching out to gently take hold of her right hand.

Shara felt a strong wave of lethargy steal over her, but it was gone nearly as quickly as it had come. It was still mildly disorienting for all that, though. When she came back to her full awareness, Shara found Cassie staring at her.

"Shara, are you all right?" Cassie asked, looking a bit more concerned than Shara thought was warranted.

After all, theyd seen plenty of other animals going into a trance while they were being acquired. This wasnt really any different. "Im fine, but I think we should really get started before someone starts missing you back in the house."

"Dont worry," Cassie said. "I told my parents I was going to check in on the animals before school. Ive done that before, so they shouldnt think much of it," she continued, looking vaguely guilty.

"Do you think well have enough time? I mean, I may not go there anymore myself, but I _do_ remember that school starts at eight-thirty sharp."

"I dont think itll take us that long to find out whats been going on with you," Cassie chewed her lip, obviously thinking. "But, even if it does, this should at least give me an idea about whats its like for you when you transform."

"All right then," she said.

Cassie closed her eyes, obviously concentrating on the new morph that she had acquired, and her skin started to lighten. Soon, she looked like a quasi-albino version of herself. Then her hair finally started to lighten, lengthening all the while until it hung just a few inches below her shoulders. When all of the physical changes had seemingly been completed, Cassie opened her eyes.

Then she blinked. "Wow. Is this really how well you see?" she asked, looking around at the barn in clear amazement. "I guess thats kind of a stupid question," she laughed. "I mean, _I_ wouldnt be seeing things like this if _you_ didnt."

"I guess I just didnt think about things like that," she admitted; not mentioning the fact that she couldnt really remember how she had been able to able to see when she had still been human.

"Oh," she said, blinking and looking around at the barn and its various occupants again. "I guess that makes some sense. I mean, with what happened to you and your brother, you really wouldnt be that that concerned with how well you could see."

__

Yeah, lets go with that, she thought but didnt say; she didnt want Cassie to worry about her any more than she clearly already did. "So, do you think you have time for at least one transformation?"

Cassie checked her watch, now looser on her more slender wrist. She winced. "Sorry, but I guess we _are_ going to have to wait until after school," she said, even as she began to demorph.

"Thats all right. I didnt really think wed have enough time to get this done now," she said, smiling as Cassie regained her normal form. "I am grateful for the way youre trying to help me with this, though," she said over her shoulder, as she turned and headed up the ladder.

"Ill see you back here after school, Shara," Cassie said.

"I look forward to it," she said earnestly.

As Cassie left the barn, Shara crawled back behind the hay-bales that formed her and Slades little shelter from the world. And, sure enough, when she looked toward her brother she found him fast asleep in the blankets that Cassie had brought for them. For the most part, that didnt sound like too bad an idea.

Shed worry about how much their bodies had changed from Human-standard later; when or if they started experiencing problems more severe than a few attempted mental invasions. Until then, Shara decided that she wouldnt worry about it. Closing her eyes, she curled up under the covers next to her brother, and swiftly fell asleep.


	34. New morphs

Her day at school passed pretty much like all the others before it, and soon Cassie found herself heading back home with her father. He was listening to his music, but this time she was a bit too distracted by her thoughts to pay attention to it. She would have probably been grateful for that, if shed been aware of it at all.

Once theyd made it back to the house, Cassie had a quick snack, and then told her dad that she was going to be taking care of the animals for awhile. He thanked her for her help, while Cassie herself winced internally at the half-truth, and then headed for the barn.

Once she had fed, watered, and otherwise taken care of the animals being treated in the Clinic, Cassie started up the ladder to speak with Shara. She didnt know quite what she would find, since Slade and Shara were both so different than they had once been; a fact that she was now fully aware of.

She hadnt wanted to worry Shara or possibly annoy her, given that she didnt seem to like to talk about what she was or what had happened to her and her brother and there hadnt been any time to get into that kind of a discussion besides, but when she had morphed into Shara, shed found herself feeling oddly lethargic. The morph hadnt even been that strenuous, since she had retained the same organs and basic configuration throughout. Still, when shed fully become Shara, she had felt tired.

She didnt know if it had had something to do with what had happened to her and Slade, but she wanted to find out; maybe there was something she could do to help.

When she found Shara and Slade, curled up together like a pair of wolf pups, and fast asleep under the blankets that she had provided for them, Cassie couldnt help but find it cute. Even as she wondered just what could make the both of them so eager to sleep all the time.

"Shara?" she called softly, not wanting to wake Slade if she could help it, but wanting Shara to hear her.

"Cassie?" Shara said, sounding mildly disoriented.

"Cmon," she said softly, helping the other girl to her feet. "Weve still got to find out what happens to you when you transform. And," she said, glancing over at the still slumbering form of her brother. "I dont really think youd want to do this in front of Slade."

"Yeah," Shara said, looking back at her brother. "I dont think I would."

The expression on the other girls face was unreadable, and as they climbed down the ladder and concealed themselves behind one of the partitions that kept the predators from the many prey species, Cassie couldnt help but wonder what Shara had been thinking. Shed probably never find out, though, so she decided to put it out of her mind.

Focussing on the newest morph she had acquired, Cassie could feel her body slimming down and gaining muscle mass. Her eyesight became sharper and more motion-oriented, to the point where she could clearly make out the subtle movements of Sharas chest as she breathed. It was strange; almost like Rachels descriptions of being a cat.

"Cassie, are you all right?" Shara asked, looking confused and a bit concerned.

"Im fine, Shara," she said, in the other girls voice. "Its just taking me a bit longer to get used to these new senses of yours than I thought," she smiled slightly. "At least now I know now why you two always seem to talk so softly," she said, making an effort to modulate her own voice.

She also knew now why Shara had always seemed to be trying not to noticeably wince when any of the others spoke to her, and for a moment she wondered at the fact that Slade didnt seem to have the same problem. Maybe Shara remembered more about being human than she let on, even if she couldnt consciously recall it. Or, it could just be that Slade had a higher pain-tolerance than she did.

There really wasnt any way for her to know without asking invasive questions, which she wasnt going to start doing.

"How do you and Slade transform?" she asked, having searched in vain for some kind of mental trigger; since Shara had always seemed to close her eyes before she transformed, Cassie had thought that that had been a safe bet.

"I dont know," Shara admitted, shaking her head. "I always just seem to manage it, somehow."

Just after she said that, Cassie watched as Shara closed her eyes. Then, she felt a pulse of power rippling through the room, something that left her slightly breathless in its wake. Just as she would have asked Shara what it was, Cassie saw the other girls eyes start glowing right through the lids.

A glow that was as bright pink as the light that sprang up whenever she used that strange transformation of hers. Lines of pink light, tracing some kind of pattern that she didnt have the time to really analyze, before they were washed out by a sudden burst of bright pink light.

Closing her own eyes, Cassie tried to remember the feel of that strange energy, searching for the core of power that Shara had accessed with such ease. When she finally managed to connect with it, it almost felt like she had grabbed onto a bolt of lightning, or tried to _swallow_ one. Her head was snapped back by the sheer force of the energy now coursing through her body, eyes snapping open to stare at the ceiling.

Her fingers splayed out, twitching slightly as the Teknocircuts that shed copied from Shara were activated for the very first time. The clear, unobstructed view she had of the barns rafters was briefly obscured by a sudden burst of bright light, but it was gone almost as quickly as it came, and it left her vision substantially clearer in its wake.

Relaxing as the energy flowing through her body stabilized at a more manageable level, Cassie looked over at the armored form of Shara standing in front of her. Lifting her own hands to eye-level, Cassie found that she was wearing just the same kind of armor that Shara was now clad in. Still, even without confirming it visually, she would have known that something was different.

She felt well, _powerful_.

It wasnt a feeling that she had been particularly expecting, and it was kind of unnerving. It was almost like she had morphed into one of the large predators that Rachel enjoyed so much. She didnt have too much fondness for the morph on that level alone, but there was something else

Some other presence seemed to be watching her. Something that was as much a part of this new mind of hers as it wasnt. Something that seemed to stretch from her to Shara to Slade, and then beyond the three of them to encompass people or _things_ that Cassie didnt want to think about right now.

Maybe maybe it had something to do with what Jake had said happened to Slade back before their mission involving the soldiers and Area 51. She didnt know, and for the most part she didnt _want_ to know. She was only using this morph to help Shara get the hang of her own transformation, like the other girl had asked her to.

It wasnt as if she was ever going to have the need to use this morph again; at least, she hoped not.

"Cassie, are you feeling all right?"

Sharas voice broke her out of the thoughts that had been troubling her, but it didnt make her forget the fact that that whatever it was, was still there.

"Im all right," she said, not wanting Shara to worry about her any more than she might have been doing already. "But, I think theres someone or some_thing_ watching you, somehow."

"Its probably Darkon," Shara muttered, sounding bitter and helpless at once.

Cassie was about to ask who Darkon was, but then she abruptly realized that she _knew_ on some level; he was the supreme commander of this particular group of Radam soldiers. The one who had been responsible for creating them in the first place. He was the one she had been born to serve, and _Wait, what am I even _thinking_?!_

"I I think I know him," she said, feeling a chill at the thoughts that she could remember running through her mind when she had thought about him. "What happened to me?"

"Im pretty sure that that was a carryover from what happened to me," Shara said calmly, though not without a hint of bitterness. "Anyway," she said, seeming to force herself to smile calmly. "Thats not really what were here for."

"Yeah," Cassie responded, trying to ignore the lingering uneasiness that she felt; if Shara could deal with this for as long as she had, then she could deal with it for as long as she needed to. "I guess we arent."

Taking a deep breath, more out of a sense that she _should_ rather than any pressing need to do so, Cassie focused on the energy permeating her body. As she turned the problem of how to transform out of this armored form she was in, the energy seemed to recede. It felt like she was pulling it all back inside her somehow, though she couldnt have really explained how.

Like morphing, Sharas power seemed to be controlled by thoughts alone. That was good, since it made it easier to deal with thanks to the superficial similarities.

Once she had managed to suppress the last of the energy flowing through her body, Cassie opened her eyes and looked around. Everything seemed; not exactly blurry, but less sharp than it had been when she had been wearing the armor.

"Well, I guess _that_ wasnt one of my more brilliant ideas," Shara said, looking ruefully at the pile of clothes next to the wall that they had stood behind to conceal themselves from anyone coming into the barn.

Cassie could tell that her own clothes had been obliterated by the same energy that had consumed Sharas, but she wasnt quite sure what to do about that. She knew that she had to demorph soon, or else risk getting trapped in Sharas body, so that was what she did. Looking back over at Shara, she saw the other girl was dressing up.

Heading over to the pile of clothes after Shara had gotten done with it, Cassie pulled some out and started dressing herself.

"I dont think we should really try this again," she said. "I mean, after what almost happened," she continued, remembering the strange presence she had felt; the feeling that she was being watched by a creature not even her worst nightmares could have conjured up. Someone who, in his own way, was even worse than Visser Three.

"You might be right about that," Shara conceded. "I guess Ill just have to get the hang of these powers on my own."

Nodding, Cassie went over to the pile of would-be giveaway clothes and picked out some that looked almost exactly like the ones that she had destroyed while trying to help Shara. Her parents werent likely to notice the small differences between the two sets of clothes, and even if they did they were more likely to write it off as an artifact of them not really paying attention to her than anything else.

At least she wouldnt be required to lie to them any more than she already was.

With a quiet exchange of wishes for the other to have a good night sleep, Cassie watched Shara climb back up into the hayloft, then turned and left the barn herself. She needed to get some sleep so shed be able to function decently in school tomorrow, and she also needed to deal with what was left of the giveaway clothes before she did so. It wouldnt be good for her parents to find the pile of clothes shed taken in for her and Shara to use in their experiments.

Picking up the clothes as she made her way out of the barn, Cassie made her way to the garage to put them back up.


	35. Acquisition and Desire

When the morning came on Thursday, following a night of dreams that Marco would have personally preferred to forget ever happening, he hauled himself out of bed and started to go about his morning routine. Focusing on that to the exclusion of all else, he tried to forget the dreams hed been having last night; the same way he tried to forget all of the dreams that being an Animorph had brought him.

It was just easier that way.

Having finished breakfast, he headed out to catch the bus. Finding himself wondering what the reaction to his paper was going to be, Marco leaned back in his seat and relaxed. Most people, well _some_ of them at least, tended to accept his work and go on with their lives.

After all, it wasnt like the fate of the _world_ was riding on his having turned in a book report; in fact, it was nearly the opposite.

Jake and the others, him included of course, had decided that it was too risky for them to head back out to the Royan Island facility anytime before the weekend. If one of them aside from the four who didnt have to worry about those kinds of things got caught and ended up getting grounded, they would be set back a bit in their efforts.

When the bus finally made it to its inevitable destination, Marco climbed off and blended in with the crowd heading into the building. Jake was better at the whole blending thing, but he had the advantage of being completely unremarkable. Not only that, but Jake really _wanted_ to blend in; it wasnt his fault that hed gotten caught up in the middle of _two_ alien wars.

After hed gotten into his locker and shuffled all the stuff he wasnt going to use for his classes into the back where it wouldnt fall out, Marco turned and headed into his first class of the day.

XXX

Once school had let out for the day, Marco did something that he had never done before: he hung around in the gym for a few minutes, and then he headed for the pool. The pool, with its mingled, cloying scent of mildew and chlorine, had always made him think of athletes foot. The edges of the pool were bordered in white tile, and all the water made the bottom of the pool look deep blue.

There was a high-dive and a low-dive at the deep end, and small windows set high in the left- and right-side walls. Even with the banks of fluorescent lights overhead, and the lamps in the pool itself the ones that had always reminded him of car headlights the room itself always seemed gloomy somehow.

It was stupid, what he was about to do; Jake would have been berating him for it if hed been here to see it. So would any of the others, all except for Rachel and Slade; and even then for different reasons. The fact that he was doing something that _Rachel_ would have approved of wasnt lost on him, but neither was the fact that this was what he had to do.

If he didnt take the chance that had presented itself to him here to use the shark morph that was encoded somewhere within his body; to feel what it was like to become that emotionless, relentless predator he knew without a doubt that he would do something even stupider the next time the opportunity presented itself to him.

Heading over to his gym locker, he changed into the clothes that he had left there from the last time hed used them; something suitable for swimming and morphing both. Then he went back into the main area and checked the pool again. To his vast and visible to such nonexistent bystanders as he was dealing with relief, there was no one there. Not a soul to bear witness to his strange transformation.

Not a ripple disturbed the tranquil water.

Not, that was, until Marco himself jumped in feetfirst, bobbing back to the surface almost as quickly as he had fallen under.

"This is insane, Marco," he said. "So Ill be careful," he countered. "Youre talking to yourself, do you know that?" he asked. "Shut up."

Closing his eyes, Marco began a process that he had wanted to do since he had taken that first step on Sunday: he began to morph the Hammerhead shark whose DNA resided in him. He pictured it, writhing almost pathetically in Sharas grip as she held it our for them all to touch. And then, even as he recalled Shara tossing the monster fish back into its tank, he felt the first of the changes beginning.


	36. Beast of the Sea

He felt it when all of his bones began to melt, changing into the cartilage that shark skeletons were entirely composed of. Looking down through the water at the lower half of his body, Marco watched as his feet and toes lengthened like taffy being pulled. The transformation inched its way up his calves, until he found himself in the rather surprising position of being tall enough to touch the tile flooring in the deep end of the pool without moving from where he floated.

The sensation of something tugging at his back, something that pulled at the melting bones of his spine, prompted Marco to reach back and attempt to feel just what was happening to him. It turned out to be the sharks dorsal fin was growing out of the bones of his back. The inside of his mouth began to itch, and then something not terribly unlike teething pain dulled but recognizable began to spread through his mouth.

He was growing the teeth of the shark in his blood.

"Hey, wuss! Get outta the pool!"

Two large splashes, the sound of something heavy being dropped in the water, echoed through the formerly silent pool area. Marco turned, confronted with the two boys whod dove into the pool with him. Two particularly familiar boys: Drake and Woo; divers for the swim team, and bullies the like of which Marco made a concerted effort to avoid.

Drake was the only one whose intelligence Marco could have respected under different circumstances; Woo was an abject imbecile. They both, however, were complete and utter jerks, and unrepentant bullies.

"Get out of the pool, punk!" Woo shouted.

"Dont make us kick your butt, Marco-roni," Drake added, in what he probably thought was a menacing tone of voice.

Marco knew that he should have been at the very least worried about what these two were going to do to him, but the only thing he could find to concern himself was the possibility of them diving underneath the water for a prolonged period of time. They could, if they did something like that, end up finding out that he wasnt as normal as he looked. From the waters surface, they were far more likely to dismiss his unnaturally long legs and toes as an artifact of light-distortion.

Reversing the half-morph, Marco mentally berated himself. Hed been stupid, cocky, thinking he could get away with something this audacious in a place as public as the one hed chosen. Jake would be livid; if he somehow managed to find out. Demorphing as fast as he could managed, Marco felt his legs and toes being pulled back into his body; losing contact with the tile floor of the pool as he did so.


	37. Confrontation

Before he could even begin to react to the taunts, Woo lay back in the water and kicked him in the chest. Hed moved too fast for Marco to dodge the kick, and consequently Marco ended up clutching at his chest, short of breath and in pain.

"Told you to step off," Drake spat. "Now were going to have to stomp you for not having any respect. Unless you want to get your skinny hinder out of the pool, that is."

There it was: his chance to leave without complications or repercussions. All he had to do was walk away.

"Yeah, run home to your mommy, Marco-roni," Woo sneered; Marco thought he sounded more idiotic than intimidating.

"He cant," Drake said, and Marco thought for a moment that he almost sounded human. "His moms dead."

"Oh, boo hoo," Woo sneered mockingly. "Oh, boo hoo, boo hoo," continued, wiping fake tears from his eyes. "His mother probably just ran off with some dude."

A slow, cold-burning anger settled in the pit of Marcos stomach upon hearing those words. The only thing he had to do was finish demorphing and walk away, but after what he had just heard, he was in no mood to be reasonable. Staring at the arteries that pulsated on either side of the bullys Adams apple, he wondered for a moment just how that warm flesh would taste; and if Woo would scream as he died.

"What are you looking at?" Woo demanded, not liking the way that Marco was staring so fixedly at him. "Youre dead, man, if you keep eyeballing me like that."

But he didnt make a single move forward. Marco didnt like that; hed wanted Woo to move toward him. He was eager for such a confrontation, almost craving it.

"Whats the matter with his eyes?" Drake wondered, both curious and afraid. "Look at his eyes, man!"

"Marco?" Jake called, distracting the attentions of the two bullies before they could do anything stupid. "Whats up?"

"Aww, isnt that sweet?" Drake sneered, regaining some of his mental equilibrium. "Big Jake is here to rescue little Marco-roni."

Marco snapped his head around to face the leader of the Animorphs, teeth bared in a fierce grimace. "I dont need your help," he snapped, the sharks teeth still in his mouth distorting but not mangling his words.

"Let it go, Marco," Jake said calmly, though not without a bit of sternness in his tone.

Ignoring him, Marco turned his attention back to Woo. He was still focusing on the blood, pumping through the veins just under the skin of Woos neck. He was so close, almost within arms reach; it would be so very easy

"He dissed my mom," Marco snarled, trying to distract himself a bit; maybe get Jake to go away before he made his next move

"Hes not the one responsible for your mother," Jake said; once again the voice of reason. "Dont punish him for the sins of someone else."

Woos eyes were darting back an forth between Marco and Jake, an almost comical expression of fear coming over his face. Marco didnt quite know what the other boy made of his and Jakes conversation, but it was pretty obvious that he didnt like it. Or maybe he just didnt like the way that Marco was still staring at his neck.

That could be it, too.

"Save it for the _real_ bad guys, Marco," Jake said firmly.

The rage at Woo for mocking his mother had ebbed by now, so Marco let the shark morph go. If anyone other than Jake had had a chance to see the sharks teeth in his mouth well, it was just better that no one else saw them. As he regained the last of his human body, Marco climbed out of the pool.

He could tell that Jake wanted to yell at him well, as close as Jake ever got to yelling, anyway but he was obviously trying to restrain himself until they got out of earshot of the two bullies. Climbing out of the pool, he followed Jake out of the building.

"Whats the matter with you?" the leader of the Animorphs demanded, once they were far enough away not to be overheard by anyone.

Shrugging, Marco forced a casual smile. "Not a thing, Jake, not one, tiny, little thing. I guess Woo just kind of looked like a fish to me. He look like a fish to you? It must be that stupid, fishy look on his face all the time."

He forced a chuckle; the joke wasnt one of his better ones, but it was the best he could think up under the circumstances. Jake gave him a long, considering look.

"Maybe youd better sit this next mission out, Marco," he said at last.

His next laugh was genuine. "Jake, youd have to kill me to keep me away from that island."


	38. New plans

When she finally made it back home, after a day of considering what to do about the problem that Shara had been having since she hadnt really wanted to give up on it, but she also hadnt wanted to waste a lot of clothes on experiments that might not work Cassie had thought that she had something that might work. She would even be able to find the materials that she had decided to use in the garage at home.

That only made her all the more eager to gather all the needed materials so she could meet up with Shara to tell the other girl about her plans.

Greeting her parents the way she always did, Cassie stopped for a quick meal, then waited until both her mom and dad had left to prepare a meal for Slade and Shara, and some snacks for Shara in case she needed them. Heading for the barn, Cassie checked to make sure that she wasnt being followed or watched. As much as she hated the paranoia and suspicion that had crept into every part of her life, Cassie knew that it was important for her own survival and by extension that of the Animorphs that she keep it up.

Once she had made it into the barn, Cassie smoothly made her way up the ladder and over to the stack of hay-bales that the two siblings took shelter behind for most of the day. And most of the night, she thought with a twinge of guilt; it seemed like the only time Slade and Shara were able to leave the barn was when the Animorphs had a mission.

Still, it wasnt as if either of them had a real home to go back to anymore; nothing that Slade remembered, and if Shara remembered anything more than he did she wasnt saying anything.

Once the two of them had finished their food, Cassie tapped Shara on the shoulder and made a come with me gesture, not wanting to disturb Slade when he was obviously settling back down for a nap. For whatever reason, Slade seemed to need a lot more sleep than Shara. Cassie didnt really know what the reasons behind that were, but it probably had something to do with what the Radam had done to them; Cassie had decided a couple days ago that she would simply be grateful for small favors and leave it at that.

It was pretty obvious that she wasnt going to find those kinds of things out, not for awhile, and maybe not at all.

"What did you want to talk to me about, Cassie?" Shara asked, keeping her voice low.

"Well, Ive been doing some thinking, about that problem youve been having with your clothes," she said, also keeping her voice low; she knew now just how hard it was on the two of them, to be almost constantly bombarded by a wall of sound.

Sound that the average human being which, for all their strangeness, most of the Animorphs still were would have been either completely unaware of, or for the most part not bothered by.

"Whatve you come up with?" she asked, sounding interested.

"Well, I thought that, since we dont want to keep wasting clothes from the Give Away box on experiments," well, _she_ didnt, but it was clear from the look on her face that Shara agreed. "I thought we could try something different."

"What did you have in mind?"

"Well, I was thinking that," she paused for a moment, gathering herself. Now that she was actually _talking _about it, the idea sounded kind of silly, but it was really the only option that they had right now; the only one she could agree to using. "I could tie some ribbons around your waist, or your neck, or maybe your arms, and then you could practice transforming with those on."

"You really think that would work?"

"I think it might help you to get used to transforming while youre wearing something."

"How many ribbons do you have?" Shara asked, seeming mildly dubious, but looking as if she was at least willing to give the plan a shot. "I mean, suppose I dont get the hang of the transformation before you run out of ribbons?"

"I dont think thats going to be an issue," she said, smiling to reassure Shara about the plan that shed been working out while shed had free moments at school. "My mom keeps a lot of ribbons, from Christmas and birthdays and stuff like that. Im sure well have enough to get you used to transforming while youre wearing _something_, at least."

"So youre planning to wrap me up in Christmas ribbons?" Shara asked, with a soft giggle. "Are you going to try slapping a bow on my head, too?"

She laughed softly. "Only if you want me to." They both laughed a bit at that. "But for now, I think we should get started."

"Yes, I think youre right," Shara said, beginning to un-tuck her shirt.

Turning away, to give the other girl some semblance of privacy while she stripped, Cassie took out the spools of ribbon that she had collected from the box in the hall closet. It might not have been the most normal plan in the world, but she was fairly confidant that it would work. If not, then she would just have to think of something else.

When Cassie turned away, she began to remove the clothes that the other girl had given her. That plan of hers was a strange one, but it was also the only one they had. _She_ certainly didnt know what to do about getting herself new clothes after shed destroyed them in an attempt at transforming.

Carefully hanging her clothes on the top of the partition, Shara turned back to Cassie. "All right," she said, uncrossing her arms and lowering them to her sides. "Im all ready for you, Cassie."

There was really no reason for her to be so embarrassed around Cassie; they were both girls, and Cassie had never given her any reasons to mistrust her. Cassie had given her every reason _to_ trust her, in fact: taking her and Slade in even when shed known basically nothing about them, feeding and sheltering them, and even keeping them a secret from her own parents. It was clear from all of those actions that she could fully trust the other girl.

Some habits were just hard to break, that was all.

When Cassie came over to her, looking like she was trying to focus exclusively on the ribbon she was working with, Shara knew that she wasnt the only one feeling that way. Perversely, she found that fact kind of made her relax a bit. Taking a breath to steady herself, Shara wondered briefly if Cassie would ask for her help during this next part.

Though, as she felt Cassie winding the ribbon around her body, in a pattern that felt like a crude approximation of her old morphing outfit, she began to doubt that that would end up being the case. Once Cassie had finished tying the ribbon at the back of her neck, then flipped her hair back the way it had originally been, Shara breathed more easily.

None of the knots that Cassie had tied made the ribbon tight enough to be uncomfortable, so that was one more worry off her shoulders.

"All right, Shara," Cassie said softly, facing the partition but clearly speaking to her. "Youre all ready for your first try."

"Yeah," she chuckled softly. "I hope its my last, too."

Concentrating on her transformation, Shara felt the energy inside her body begin to build. When she could feel the power burning in her skin, she knew that the change had been completed. Opening her eyes, she looked over at Cassie; the other girl was staring at the armor covering her body from head to toe.

Taking a deep though unnecessary breath, Shara concentrated and let the transformation fade. Once she was back in her normal form, she looked down. Then she swore, softly, but creatively and at some length.

"It didnt work?" Cassie asked, facing the partition again.

"No, it didnt," she said with a sigh. "I dont even know what Im doing wrong," she groused.

"Well, no sense beating yourself about something you have no control over," Cassie said kindly, walking back over with the spool of ribbon.

"Yeah, I know," she sighed, as Cassie started tying the next length of ribbon around her; a length that was probably going to end up disintegrating just like the other one.

Just like all those clothes shed been wearing during her initial transformations; it was annoying, but it was probably no less true for all that.


	39. Attempts made

When shed watched Shara transform five times, with only the last two leaving behind even shreds of the ribbon that they had been working with, Cassie had been forced to admit that they wouldnt be making any more progress than that tonight. Shed left the snacks for the other girl, and theyd made plans to try again tomorrow night. Shed also seen that Shara was beginning to get annoyed by her apparent lack of concrete progress.

Which, considering the things that she and Slade had proven themselves capable of, probably wasnt a good thing.

So, shed suggested to Shara that she go to bed after the meal shed been eating. The other girl had readily agreed, seeming a bet sheepish about the whole thing now that it was over. Cassie had told her not to worry about it; theyd find a way to work out what she needed to do.

But, for the time being, it was better for the both of them to get some sleep.

Deciding to take that same advice herself, Cassie quickly left the barn and made her way back into the house, all the while pondering the excuse that she would give if she were questioned about what had kept her in the barn for so long. In the end, though, she wasnt required to answer for the extra time shed spent in the barn trying to help Shara get the hang of her powers. Instead of making her feel better, though, that only made Cassie feel worse.

Here her parents were willing to trust her to be responsible, and she was going behind their backs to keep people in the barn. It wasnt something that she liked to think about, but she couldnt tell them anything about Slade or Shara. Even they might be Controllers.

It was a thought she hated, but for all that it was still possible.

Settling back down in her bed, Cassie pulled the covers up to her neck, and quietly drifted off to sleep.

XXX

The next morning, a Friday, was pretty much like every other day. Especially considering the fact that the Animorphs didnt have a mission until tomorrow. Still, Cassie knew that meant that she would have to get to bed at a reasonable hour, if she was going to be awake enough to be of any use on the coming mission.

She didnt like to think about that kind of thing, but it was pretty likely that this next mission would end in a fight; she didnt want to jinx things, but most of their other missions had.

Once shed had breakfast, and brought the requisite food and drink to the two siblings who relied on her for their sustenance, Cassie said her farewells to her mother and went to join her father in the car. On the way to school, she was too preoccupied by the problem that Shara was having with her transformation to even notice the music that her father had put on for them to listen to on the way.

When they finally arrived at school, Cassie noticed that her dad was giving her kind of a strange look.

"Thinking deep thoughts, Cass?" he asked, a knowing look in his eye.

"What? Oh, I guess so," she said, trying not to seem startled.

"Well, its good to think about whats going on in your life, but just make sure you take the time out to _live_ it, too," he said sagely.

"Thanks, Dad," she said, smiling briefly. "Ill make sure to keep that in mind."

Leaving the car and her father behind, Cassie made her way into the school building. She was still thinking about what she could do for Shara, aside from what she had already done, of course. Pushing those thoughts to the back of her mind, Cassie headed inside.

XXX

The school day passed like most of the others, with the Animorphs those who had remained in school, anyway acting as if they didnt know anything about each other, beyond what they had known before that fateful night. It was for the sake of their safety, and that of everyone else on the planet, that they took those precautions. Sometimes, though, Cassie just wanted to pretend to be normal for awhile.

When she went out to meet her father at the front of the school, Cassie was slightly disappointed to realize that she hadnt thought up anything else that might be able to help Shara get the hang of transforming while she was wearing clothes. Maybe there wasnt really anything she could do to help Shara get the hang of her transformation, aside from being there to provide snacks and moral support.

Climbing into the truck, she belted herself in and sighed under her breath. If there was really nothing she could do but keep Shara company, or bring her food if and when she needed it, then Cassie resolved to do just that. It wasnt long after she had made that silent vow that they arrived back at their house, funnily enough, but as Cassie turned to unlock her door she heard her Dad chuckle.

"You remember what I told you this morning, Cass?"

"Huh?" she realized quickly what he was talking about. "Oh, that. Yeah. Whyd you ask?"

"Well, you _were_ pretty spacey on the ride back home," he said, giving her a look.

"Oh," she laughed, hoping it didnt sound quite as forced as it felt. "I was just thinking about how much I wanted to get home. Im kinda hungry."

As if on cue, her stomach growled and Cassie grinned a bit sheepishly, though she was more than a bit thankful for the timing. Her dad chuckled heartily.

"Well, thats different, then. Im pretty hungry, myself. I think Ill go fix myself a snack once we get back inside," he said with a smile. "How about I fix one for you, too?"

"Thanks, Dad," she said, genuinely grateful for the gesture while knowing that she would still have to make lunch for Slade and Shara on her own.

It would defeat the whole purpose of keeping them a secret from her parents if she revealed that she was preparing food enough for two extra people. Still, given the amount that those two could eat, it was possible that they would end up noticing something that way. She hope that that wouldnt end up being the case, but that was always a possibility.

Even in spite of the fact that she hated lying to her parents, she didnt want to expose Slade and Shara to anymore danger than she had to.

Once shed gotten inside and had some food, she sat back at the table and let herself digest her food. Her dad stood up soon after, and Cassie added one more half-truth to the pile that shed already had to tell; letting him know that she would take care of all the chores in the barn, and then stay for awhile to see how all of the animals were doing.

"I admire the dedication youve been showing these last two days, but I dont want you working yourself too hard. Tomorrow, I want you to take the day off, except for your regular check-ups on the animals. If anything needs handling in there, Ill take care of it," he said with a stern smile.

Cassie smiled back, trying not to feel guilty about how drastically she would be disobeying his advice that very day. "Ill remember that. Thanks, Dad."

She stood up, and her dad hugged her before he left for the main parts of the house. Clearing her dishes, Cassie gathered up the extra food that she would need to keep Slade and Shara healthy while they were staying in the barn. She also picked up some extra snacks for Shara, in case she got too hungry while she was trying to work out the problems with her transformation.

With the meal and the snacks both fully prepared, Cassie headed out to the barn to finish the first and last of her self-imposed chores. The ones that she doubted she would ever be able to tell her parents about.


	40. Expectations

After an unusually restful considering what he was going to have to do later Saturday morning, Marco made his excuses to his father, then headed out of the house to find somewhere to morph in secret. Finding a good spot, he focused on his reliable old Osprey morph. Winging his way into the sky, he thermal-hopped until he found himself catching sight of other birds.

Birds that might just turn out to be the very people that hed set out to meet this morning. Following along, making sure to keep the other birds of prey in sight, Marco found that only two of them were heading for the island: the raven and another Osprey. Cassie and Slade.

(Hey, fancy meeting you two here,) he said. (Wheres Shara? Or did she make it out to the island before I got this far?)

(I think she might have,) Cassie said. (She wanted to test something we were working on last night, so I think shes on the island now.)

Wondering for a couple seconds what Cassie had meant by that, Marco mentally shrugged and kept flying. It probably wasnt that important, or maybe it was just private. And, since Shara had been considerate enough not to press him for information he wasnt going to give even in spite of her obvious curiosity he was going to do the same for her.

Once all of the Animorphs had gathered together on Royan island, though Marco could see clear evidence that some of them had arrived before the others. In the case of _certain_ people, way before.

(Wow, Shara,) he said, catching sight of the fully demorphed, shorter blonde. (When did _you_ start out for this place? The crack of dawn?)

__

(Well, lets just say I have my ways of getting around quickly,) she said, seeming amused.

(Ill say,) he chuckled mentally, landing and demorphing even as he formed the words and transmitted them.

As his human features emerged from the birds, Marco heard Shara laugh briefly. He also saw Jake demorphing, with a guardedly serious expression on his face. Sighing as his humanity reasserted itself completely, he decided to get the inevitable over with sooner rather than later. He pretty much knew what it was.

Heading off a short distance, while the others who were still half-morphed or more finished with their demorphing, he faced Jake squarely and raised his eyebrows.

"Marco, are you all right?"

"Sure. Why wouldnt I be all right?" he asked, hoping Jake knew a rhetorical question when he heard one.

Apparently he didnt. "Because if you were all right, youd be busy telling everyone how insane this is, and how were all gonna die. Youre weirding people out, being so tense."

"Shara and Slade seem perfectly fine," he said, not wanting to concede the argument.

Jake gave him a Look. "The people who _know_ you. And Slade doesnt count."

Marco Looked right back. "Youre telling me its _more_ comforting if I act like were all going to die out there?"

"Its what most of them have come to expect from you," Jake said.

"Well then, Ill try harder to be _entertaining_," he drawled.

Jake rolled his eyes, then took a quick, discreet look around. The rest of the Animorphs were down at the beach, fairly close to the waters edge. They were all trying to pretend that they didnt notice Jake trying to talk with Marco. All of them, that was, except Slade, who didnt care, and Ax, who probably didnt understand the significance anyway.

Not that those two things made Marco feel better about the situation; Rachel would probably think that hed needed Jakes help to psych himself up for the coming fight. He still hadnt forgotten that crack shed made about him being afraid of sharks.

"Look, Marco, were going to be heading into a possible fight down there," Jake said tersely, jerking his head toward their fellow Animorphs. "All Im saying is, maybe its time you told the others whats going on with you."

"Nothing is going on with me, Jake."

"Marco, your mother is down there," Jake said sternly.

Flinching, Marco bit the inside of his cheek. Hed been trying not to think about that. "How is it going to help the others if I tell them that I might have my own problems going into this?"

"I wasnt thinking of helping the _others_, Marco," Jake said, looking surprised at the idea. "I thought it would help _you_."

"No," he said, shaking his head violently. "It doesnt help me to have people pitying me, you know? I went through like a year of pity after my mom died. Supposedly died. I dont like pity. Pity makes you feel small and weak. Id rather have someone _hate _me than pity me."

"No one hates you, Marco," Jake said with a sigh.

"But they _would_ pity me," he retorted.

Jake couldnt answer that; Marco knew he wouldnt have been able to.

"Hey," Rachel called, sounding vaguely annoyed. "Are we doing this, or are you two going to stand there yapping all day?"

"Were doing this," he said forcefully, making his way out to the beach. "But, Ill tell you guys right now: this whole thing is insane. In_sane_! Morphing sharks so we can infiltrate some underwater Yeerk complex? Whats gone _wrong_ with our lives?"

As Jake passed him on the way to the water, Marco turned to him and muttered: "Happy now?"

"Okay. Are you guys all ready?" Jake asked, not seeming affected in the least.

"Ive _been_ ready," Rachel grumbled.

"I think the only ones who needed any prep-time were you guys," Shara said, clearly trying to be understanding.

"Everyone, remember: this is a new morph for most of us. There are going to be a lot of new instincts to deal with. So be prepared," Cassie said, sweeping them all with a serious gaze, and lingering a bit on Slade and Shara.

He didnt really know why she bothered; if there were any two people who knew what being a shark was like, it would have to be them. When Tobias fluttered down out of the scraggly trees to land on Rachels shoulder, the rest of them waded out into the cold, foaming surf. A bird, an Andalite, and six humans, two of whom werent exactly all that human anymore.

"Were a scruffy, weird-looking bunch, arent we?" he scoffed, grinning.

"And short," Rachel added "helpfully", smiling with mocking sweetness. "At least, _some_ of us are."

"Well all have the same sized dorsal fin in a few minutes, mighty Xena," he retorted, grinning right back.

"Hes got you there, Rachel," Shara said, laughing.

"Hey, Tobias, you _do_ realize that there arent any mice underwater, right?"

He was playing the part that he had crafted for himself, over the months that he and the others had been fighting the Yeerks: the joker, the reckless exaggerator. The one that always seemed to look on the lighter side of things; most things, anyway. It was a good cover, but sometimes he could forget to maintain it.

That wouldnt be good.

Wading out into the water, amid the rougher waves that hadnt been there the last time the Animorphs had visited this tiny little island, Marco tried to put all of the myriad thoughts that had been troubling him since the start of this mission out of his mind. Closing his eyes, the better to bring his attention inward, he tried to call upon the mental picture that he had formed of the shark as it had thrashed around in Sharas grip. It was a thing easier said than done.

The urges to kill and to protect to kill Visser One and to protect his mother roiled within his mind as he contemplated this next phase. They would be going down into the heart of the enemys stronghold, and there was a better-than-average chance that he would have to confront her them _it_.


	41. Blood And Water

Forcing all of his thoughts his fears and uncertainties and concerns to the back of his mind, Marco began his morph at last. Like all morphs, even those of the same animal, this one was different; this time, it was his skin that changed first, becoming dead gray with the texture of fine-grained sandpaper.

His feet twined and twisted together even as he watched, leaving him to fall back into the water. A sharp pain in his right hand drew his attention, and Marco noticed then that hed managed to cut the side of it on a shell. It wasnt particularly important before he finished with the morph, the cut would be completely gone but it was at least painful enough to notice.

When he tried to stand back up, Marco realized just how far the morph had progressed: his legs were completely gone, in their place was the sharp, cutting tail of a shark. Windmilling his arms in the water, Marco just managed to raise his head above it.

XXX

Even with all the times that she had used this morphing power shed been granted, Shara still found it incredibly strange when she was required to put it into play. It was nothing like the powers that shed been granted or, more correctly, been forced into accepting by the Radam.

For one thing, they required far more concentration to activate; you needed to hold the image in your mind while you were changing, or you would end up stopping halfway through. The Radams transformation fed on itself once it was triggered, cascading over you until you were filled with energy and felt like you could take on anyone or anything on Earth. It was almost scary, how invincible the armor the power that flowed through it made her feel.

It would be all too easy to fall into the trap of actually _believing_ that she was invincible, and staying so long in her transformed state that she allowed Darkon to find her somehow. She couldnt allow that to happen; to say nothing of the danger that the Radam Warlord presented to earth as a whole, there was also the matter of protecting the scant remains of her family from his depredations. She wouldnt allow _anyone_ to take Slade away from her, whether he remembered her or not.

She would die before she let that happen.

Focusing on the morph to hurry it along, Shara let herself drop into the water and continued focusing. It wasnt long before she was a complete Hammerhead, watching as other Hammerheads turned and twisted their way through the water in an oddly purposeful way. Almost as if they were searching for something.

(What are you guys doing? Shouldnt we be heading back to that Yeerk facility we discovered last time?) she asked, watching in confusion as the other Animorphs turned in restless circles in the shallows. (Guys?)

(What do you think theyre doing, Shara?) Slade asked, echoing the question that she had already asked, likely without even knowing it since she hadnt aimed her thought-speak at him.

(If I could guess, Id tell you,) she said, staring at the sharks as she tried to puzzle out just what they could be thinking.

Cassie had said, on more than one occasion, that they only had two hours in any one morph. So, what could the others be thinking, wasting time searching for whatever it was that they were searching for?

(Guys?) she paused for a moment, waiting on whatever kind of response that she was going to get. _(Guys!)_

(Oh my God!) Marco exclaimed, making her wonder just what it was that she had missed this time; and if she should be grateful for it or not. (It was me! That was my blood!)

(What are you talking about, Marco?)

(Shara, call out to them again,) he said, sounding relieved and urgent at once.

__

(Everyone, listen to me! You all need to get a hold of yourselves, right now,) she said, deliberately using her telepathy so shes make more of an impact on them.

(Jake!) Marco called. (Jake, shake it off, man! The shark has you. Tobias! Ax! Rachel! Cassie! Slade! All of you! Its the sharks instincts, you have to get control of them! That was _my_ blood!)

Watching carefully, Shara could almost _see_ the moment when the other Animorphs started to come around. Slowly, and seemingly reluctantly, the five Hammerheads abandoned their search.

(Yikes,) Cassie said with a short, nervous laugh. (Kind of single-minded, arent they?)

(No one else bleed,) Rachel groused. (Im going to be hungry for hours as it is.)

Shara would have rolled her eyes, if shed had any of the proper facial muscles. (I dont think this is really the time to be making jokes, Rachel.)

(Whos joking?)

Deciding not to continue the conversation, Shara fell in behind the others as they headed away from the shoreline and dove deeper into the water. She swam right beside Slade, as it turned out; still, there wasnt much they had in common anymore, so she decided not to try starting up a conversation. Passing easily through the hologram, the same way theyd done when they had first come to this place in dolphin morph, but that was the only similarity.

The sharks, that had once posed such a danger to all of her friends, ignored them like they werent even there this time.


	42. Deluge

(That was easy enough,) Rachel said, and Shara silently agreed. (Lets go ahead and do this.)

(Dont forget,) Ax reminded them all. (The Leerans are psychic at close range. Whatever we do, we have to stay clear of them.)

Privately, Shara thought that she and Slade would have an easier time dealing with the Leerans. Still, she wasnt sure; a few flukes and a hunch werent really enough to go on, so she wasnt going to mention anything. It would be better to be right and not tell anyone, than to be wrong and have people counting on you for something you couldnt do.

If she was right, then shed tell the others.

(Well, now what?) Tobias asked. (Weve gotten past the guard sharks, so what do we do next?)

(Now, I guess we go take a look inside,) Jake said, not sounding particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of doing so.

(Two of the three big hatches are open,) Rachel pointed out. (Eenie, meenie, minie, moe?)

(Heads or tails?) Marco suggested.

(One potato, two potato?) Cassie added.

(Rock, paper, scissors?) Shara put in.

(What do these things mean?) Ax asked.

(These are some highly advanced human methods of for making choices,) Marco explained sardonically. (How about the middle door?) he said, sobering.

(The middle door, then,) Jake said.

XXX

As they all made for the middle door, Marco tried not to think about just what it was that he was going to face when they all made it inside. The tunnel, once they got close enough to truly appreciate the sheer scale of it, was clearly big enough to accommodate the submarine that theyd not-quite-seen a few days ago. More than that, he knew that _she_ was here; hed seen her in the private office just back from the main areas of the base.

Once theyd gotten deep enough under the water that the light from the surface no longer interfered with their vision, they found that there were lights on inside the tunnels themselves. It figured that there would be, since there was no real way to get natural light this far into the water, but it was vaguely interesting all the same. Once they were through the tunnel, passing more guard sharks on the way in, the eight Animorphs spread out slightly.

Circling upward, Marco breached the surface of the water with his dorsal fin, and then rolled over onto his left side so that he could see out of the water. The eyes of his shark morph werent made for seeing through air, but they worked well enough for his purposes. _What _he saw was another matter entirely.

The wall of corrugated steel that formed the boat dock, and the high rafters of the curved ceiling, were the only things visible from his currant position.

(Were not going to be able to see much more than this if we stay in shark morph,) Rachel pointed out reasonably. (We need to get out of the water and look around.)

(As what, though?) Jake asked. (Wed need something thatd fit in, something these Controllers wouldnt notice. And, also something with decent senses.)

(Flies. Everyone except Tobias has a fly morph,) Cassie said.

(I dont,) Shara pointed out. (I dont think Slade does, either.)

(I didnt even think of that,) Cassie said sheepishly.

(Well, at least I wont be the only one left behind this time,) Tobias said, and Marco couldnt quite tell if he was just trying to be upbeat, or if he was honestly glad not to be alone.

(I think the bad guys might notice a Red-Tailed Hawk flying around in their underwater facility. Not to mention a raven, and- whatever kind of bird that Shara morphs,) he said. (Although, there _are_ probably rats in this place, too. So the Controllers just might appreciate having you three around to eat their pests.)

(My bird morph is a Swallow-Tailed Kite, Marco,) Shara said indulgently. (I dont think it eats mice, though. Im pretty sure I remember reading that they eat insects.)

(Wed have to morph back to human underwater,) Jake pointed out, before Marco could say anything. (Then morph to fly, or bird, all without drowning.)

(Or being caught by those sharks,) Shara muttered.

(Well, at least we have _you _with us, oh mighty shark-slayer,) Marco said, chuckling.

Before Shara could think up a suitable retort, a sharp, high-pitched sound began reverberating through the water.

(Whats that?) Slade asked, turning his body so he could try to pinpoint the source of the noise.

(An alarm!) Marco exclaimed. (Oh man, they know were here!)

A large force of hammerheads came down the tunnel, lashing the water into foam behind them as they thrashed their long tails.

(Shara, I hate to have to ask-)

(I know, Jake. Thanks, but I think I can handle it,) she said, hoping that she honestly could even while turning to face the sharks head-on.

To the surprise of all involved, and to the secret relief of Shara herself, the sharks swam right past them. Passing through the small school of Animorphs, on their way to places unknown. The grinding of a mechanical door as it opened wasnt even that surprising when compared to the previous not-attack.

(Those are _definitely not_ normal sharks,) Cassie said.


	43. Holding on

(We should follow them,) Rachel suggested. (They just might lead us to where we need to go.)

(Yeah, _or_ they just might lead us right to where they make those Oscar Mayer Shark-meat Lunchables,) Marco said, smirking mentally. (Hammerhead slices, American cheese, and a cookie.)

(I dont think thatd be such a hot seller,) Shara said, as the Animorphs fell in behind the group of not-normal Hammerhead sharks that they were tracking through the facility. (People have very good reasons for not eating shark meat.)

(What would those be, oh wise one?) Marco asked, as they joined up with the group of sharks, who were oddly enough waiting to get into whatever room was behind the door that they had heard opening not long ago.

(Sharks pee through their skin,) she sent, in private thought-speak so she wouldnt distract anyone else.

(I think I could have lived without knowing that,) Marco said, as they all swam down the tunnel after the Hammerheads.

(Im starting to think Marco was right,) Tobias said, after the pathway they were following had narrowed to the point where they were all forced into single-file. (This sure _feels_ like some kind of shark slaughterhouse.)

(I dont think so,) Cassie pointed out. (I think this is probably something more medical. Besides, wed smell blood if the other sharks were getting hurt.)

(Unless theyre getting boiled alive,) Marco cheerfully countered. (Boiled cleaned, and canned all in one process! Then its Chicken of the Sea shark meat.)

(Marco, youre so wei- Awk!) Shara yelped.

Marco himself was just about to ask what was wrong, when he found out: a thick pair of steel claws clamped down just behind his sharks hammer-head, lifting him up until he hung vertically just above the water. Writhing in instinctive panic, Marco felt his gills gasping uselessly in the open air. He could see a line of sharks, all moving in the same direction.

A conveyor belt of hanging Hammerheads, and with Hork-Bajir and Human-Controllers manning control panels and equipment boards; they looked completely disinterested in the procedure, and so missed the fact that they had been infiltrated. However, it was unlikely in the extreme that anyone but Visser Three would have been paranoid enough to consider that the very sharks they were using in this operation could present any kind of danger to it.

So, perhaps they could be forgiven their negligence.

As the shark-conveyor turned a corner, a mechanical arm festooned with tools that none of the Animorphs were particularly in the right state of mind to care about rose up to just the height of the sharks heads. The business-end of the robot arm was aimed at the head of the shark two spaces ahead of Cassie. The arm extended a large, relatively thick needle, and plunged it into the back of the sharks head.

(What the?) Marco wondered aloud. (We have to get outta here!)

But the arm and the conveyor, moving with the speed and precision that most machines were known for. Cassie was injected before Marco could even begin to think of a way to stop the procedure.

(Its all right,) Cassie said, though she sounded a bit strained. (I think it might just be some kind of immune-booster or something.)

What came next, however, was not even a distant cousin to all right. The robot arm slowed, pausing for a moment over the back of Cassies sharks head. The needle retracted, and in its place appeared something that reminded Marco of nothing more than a metal detector. This assertion would prove to be more apt than any of them would have preferred, but they would only find that out once it was too late.

Extruding a drill, of the kind one would have expected to be used in carpentry rather than on a living creature, the robot arm drove the drill bit deep into the back of Cassies head. Deep relative to the length of the bit itself, of course.

(What was _that_?!) Cassie exclaimed.

The drill bit was withdrawn rather quickly, but before any relief could be felt, a small, bright, steel-colored probe was poked into the wound. It withdrew with almost the same speed that it had been deployed, and a green laser cauterized the wound before it could bleed excessively.

(Cassie!) Jake shouted, his silent voice taught with worry. (Are you okay?)

(I- I think Ill be all right,) she said. (That was really weird, though.)

(It certainly seemed it, from what I saw,) Shara said, not particularly looking forward to having such a procedure repeated on herself.

For that matter, neither was Marco; but he had Shara herself to hide behind. For the moment, anyway. Once all eight of the Animorphs had been treated for the first time, they were dropped back into the same boat dock that they had fist arrived in.

In fact, the eight of them nearly ended up on top of one another.

(What the heck was _that _all about?) Tobias wondered aloud, voicing the very question that had been going through the minds of his friends.


	44. Half pain

(The Yeerks injected us with something,) Cassie said, sounding as if she didnt know what to make of the situation. (Right into out brains. But I)

Just then, pain like nothing six of the eight Animorphs had ever felt, stabbed into their heads like so many invisible knives. Shara and Slade were the only ones not to scream during the whole process; Slade because he had a higher pain threshold than the transformed humans and Andalite, and Shara because she had clear memories of much worse pain.

Nothing could really come close to matching what the Radam had done to her; not in her eyes, at least.

Just as the pain was starting to become annoying to the two transformed Teknomen, a siren began to reverberate through the water. It was an oddly soothing sound, particularly for being so loud. The results were even more odd, and even more soothing for all that: the taste of warm blood the ultimate pleasure for a shark in the mouths of every shark that heard it.

(What is happening now?) Ax demanded.

(I dont know, but its kinda nice,) Marco said, relieved to have gotten past the pain.

The next sensation to fill the heads of the Animorphs in their identical shark morphs was a strange one. All the more for the fact that it was so very human. The shark, with its simple, single-minded desire for hunting an killing and feeding, began to notice things that had nothing to do with its base desires.

The shark noted the patterns of corrugated steel that formed the underwater portions of the dock they were all sitting in. The shark scented the water, and noticed the smells of oil, rust, and seaweed. Things that couldnt be killed and eaten, but things that had been there all the same.

(This might sound insane, but I think my shark is getting smarter,) Marco said, with an undertone of mild disbelief in his silent voice.

(Just like the sharks that attacked us that first time,) Rachel said.

(My shark brain just wondered,) Cassie said, sounding awed. (It wondered whether there would be prey for it later.)

(Now that sounds sharklike,) Jake said, with a weary sort of humor.

(No!) Cassie exclaimed. (Sharks dont _wonder_. A shark cant even form the concept of a future, let alone wonder about it. Its completely impossible.)

(So, what does that mean for us now?) Shara asked, feeling as if there was some vital information that she was still missing.

(Its the Yeerks,) Cassie said, stating the obvious but not seeming to care. (Theyve altered these brains. Thats why those sharks were able to work together the last time. The Yeerks are mutating these shark brains; we just had the first treatment.)

(Why would they be doing something like that?) Rachel wondered aloud.

(There is only one real reason that the Yeerks would bother altering the physiology of these brains,) Ax stated calmly. (To make it possible for a Yeerk to enter them. The shark brain in its natural state is too small, too simplistic, for the Yeerks to control. They are, therefore, mutating the sharks to make them suitable for infestation. They will need to add ear canals as well, so that the Yeerks will be able to enter and leave the brain as necessary.)

(A new version of Hork-Bajir,) Marco summarized. (Thats what theyre after. They want tough, deadly shock-troops that can be sent underwater, and they want them able to fight things that would rip a Taxxon to shreds. What better soldier could you ask for than a _shark_-Controller? Its perfect.)

(Yeah,) Tobias agreed, his voice grim. (The perfect nightmare to unleash on any peaceful species.)

(I have to agree,) Shara said. (With both of you; this plan of theirs is deviously cruel.)


	45. Infiltration Assault

(Whatever else, we have to find out more,) Jake said decisively. (Its time to get out of the water and take a closer look at whats going on in this place.)

The eight of them swiftly demorphed from their large shark forms, after making certain that there was no one there to see them doing so.

"Looks like its still empty," Marco whispered, not wanting to take the chance of his voice carrying; not in _this_, of all places.

"Yeah," Jake concurred, keeping his own voice low for the same reasons. "We should still be careful, though. Wed be better off morphing here, in the water. It wont bother the birds, much, and I dont think the flies will have much of a problem, if were quick."

Marco wasnt bothered by the morphing part, hed done this particular morph several times already, and if anyone could say they had a handle on it, he could. No, it wasnt anything about the coming morph that was getting to him, there was something else

As she shed the last of her shark body, not quite knowing how to feel about the fact that she was destroying something that might have been able to become sapient, Shara took a couple deep breaths. She knew from her talks with Cassie that the shark DNA inside her wouldnt be affected by anything that was done to its body while she had morphed. Likewise, her own body was protected from injuries while she was in a morph.

It was something she appreciated, all the more so because she didnt truly trust her Radam-derived powers.

When the others, the ones who had been chosen to morph flies, began to moan and then scream in pain, Shara hurried the last of her morph along, and then looked out over the other Animorphs; there might not have been anything she could do directly for the others, but she would at least make the effort to help where she could.

(Everyone, stop morphing! Stop right now!) Marco shouted, and Shara wondered if hed worked out what was happening to the others.

He probably had; he was smart and intuitive, just like people shed known before.

(What is happening?) Ax demanded. (I am experiencing a terrible pain.)

(Im not surprised,) Marco said grimly. (We all need to demorph; they put something in us.)

(What are you talking about?) she asked, not liking the implications of what Marco was saying.

(I mean, when the Yeerks drilled into us, they left something inside,) Marco said tightly. (When we started shrinking to fly size, that thing whatever it was was too big. Our fly bodies were smaller than the things inside our heads; wed have ended up killing ourselves!)

(What did they look like?) Tobias asked, echoing Sharas own concern before she could state it.

The others had already started demorphing, and Marco quickly surfaced to pick up his end of the conversation. "I couldnt really tell. I just saw Rachels head being all twisted out of shape; bulging, from trying to shrink with that _thing_ inside it," Marco finished tersely.

"Some kind of control device," Jake said, clearly angry, and just as clearly not with anyone else in the group. "I should have realized that! _Thats_ why we all got drilled when none of the other sharks did! None of us had those control devices in our heads. The Yeerks must be using them to control the sharks remotely, up until all of the treatments are finished."

(_Thats _what caused that surge of pleasure,) she said, recalling it all the more clearly for what it had been proceeded by. (They have to be using that to keep the sharks happy; helping them to forget the pain of the mutations. Its probably tied to those sirens in the water.)

(Thats just what I was about to say,) Tobias said.

"So what do we _do_ about this?" Marco asked, before anyone could say anything else.

"We get these things _out_ of our heads!" Rachel hissed. "Even if we have to stomp every Yeerk in this facility!"

"Wonderful," Marco sneered. "The subtle approach."

"Rachel might have a point," Jake pointed out. "Whatever else, we _cannot _have Yeerk control devices in our heads. Were already underwater, with implants in our brains, and psychic Leeran aliens running around. This isnt the best situation weve been faced with."

"There may be more than a few hundred Controllers here," Marco pointed out, as Shara herself began to demorph in the absence of anything that needed her having wings. "We cant just get crazy and get away with it."

"No, we cant," Jake agreed. "But we _will_ need a distraction. Two teams: one to get to the controls of this place, see if they can find a self-destruct switch for these implants or something. The other will, like Marco says, get crazy, and hopefully keep the Yeerks from finding out what team one is up to. Ax, Marco, Shara and Tobias will be in the first group. Which leaves Rachel, Cassie, Slade, and me to handle the distraction."

"At least we get to _do_ something now," Rachel grumbled, but their was a smile on her face while she did so.

"All right," Marco said nodding, as Jake and the rest of team two started going into their battle morphs. "Well, I think someone here might notice a pair of wolves running around, not to mention a leopard," he gave her a sidelong look and they both chuckled. "Well need to go airborne for this. Tobias demorphed fine, and Shara here managed just fine with her own bird morph. Besides, most people tend not to look up when theyre inside."

"Most people tend not to look up when theyre _outside_, either," Shara said, smiling slightly.

As he started morphing into his good old, reliable Osprey, Marco couldnt help but feel a shiver of apprehension. All of the morphing in the world wouldnt help erase the fact that his mother Visser One, but still his mother when it really came down to it was here inside this facility with them. He didnt think that any of the people here would be able to recognize her, Shara least of all, but none of them were here to take chances.

He knew that _she_ would recognize _him_; at least, if she were allowed a clear look at his face. That was why he wasnt going to let her _get_ one. To say nothing of the security risks that would pose to them all, he wasnt sure he would be able to deal with that.

Flapping his way up and out of the water, the Osprey in his head with him not particularly happy with him for putting it in the drink the way he had, he landed with the others up in the maze of steel beams that made up the ceiling, and with it the roof of the base. The roof itself was curved, most likely to carry the massive load of water-pressure that was generated by their being this far down.

From their position up near the top of the ceiling, the four Animorphs could look out over the Yeerks underwater facility, and have a nearly-unobstructed view of its layout. There turned out to be three dock slips, identical to the one that they had all arrived in. The farthest one held the transparent submarine, with only a pair of Taxxon maintenance workers aboard. The buildings fronting the docks were low, squat, windowless affairs, and behind them were the temporary buildings that were used for schools when their classrooms were being renovated.

(Thats a mistake: none of those buildings have any windows; none of the people in those buildings have any way of seeing whats going on in the other areas,) Ax said, his laser-sharp eyes focused on the rows of buildings. (The only windows look out into the water.)

(None of the people here are expecting any enemies here,) Shara pointed out. (No one was supposed to make it past those sharks that were guarding the place.)

(Yeah,) Marco said, giving Shara a sidelong look. (Not everyone has you on their side.)

(Whatever is happening, its happening inside those buildings,) Tobias said. (So, which one do we go for? The left or the right?)

(The one on the right,) Marco said, almost instantly.

(Whys that?) Shara asked, turning to look at him.

(Because Jake will attack the other one,) Marco said firmly, not wanting to tell the real reason for his eagerness: that the building on the left fronted the grand office that he was sure belonged to his mo- Visser One.

(Fair enough,) she said. (How do we get inside, then?)

(With incredible timing, thats how,) he said, watching as a fat Taxxon came shimmying and writhing out through the front door. (Next Taxxon that comes out, we go in.)


	46. Suicide Run

(What will we do if another Taxxon _doesnt_ come out?) Ax asked.

(Do you Andalites believe in luck?) Marco asked.

(No.)

(Me neither. How about hope?)

(We believe in hope.)

(Good to hear,) he said glibly. (Now me, I believe in Jake. See him, over behind that left building?)

(The tiger?) Shara asked, though she suspected she knew the answer already.

(Thats the one. I think hes just about ready to-) Jake roared. (Do that.)

(Thats impressive,) Shara said, watching as Jake moved forward.

The Taxxon, however, started backing up. Rather quickly, in fact. (Oh, man! Okay, well go in now!)

Releasing their talon-holds on the steel cross-beams, the four Animorph birds folded their wings and fell through the air. Their fall was a controlled one, but no less exhilarating for all that, as demonstrated by Marcos exuberant shouting. They flew over the Taxxons back with only inches to spare, traveling at nearly fifty miles per hour.

Marco was in the lead, but not by more than a quarter of an inch, if even that. The Taxxon, fortunately for them, was far more focused on the dangerous animals in front of him the Andalite Bandits, or so went the general assumption to take much notice of the four blurs that had swept past him and the doorway in nearly the same heartbeat.

Through the hallway they flew at breakneck speed, clearing the entire length more quickly than any of them were truly comfortable with. Even Tobias and Shara, who were both experienced fliers for various reasons, were unnerved by the close proximity of the far wall.

(Look out!) Marco screamed, as the wall loomed huge in his vision.

(Turn!) Tobias commanded.

(Where?) Ax queried, not sounding particularly sanguine himself.

(Doorway! _Now!_) Tobias ordered, taking charge; even Sharas pre-programmed flight experience didnt cover this kind of situation.

As a Teknoman, walls were no great obstacle to her.

The four of them blew through an open door on their right, brushing wings and feathers on the doorjamb, and into a darkened room that was mercifully empty. Shara almost started to wonder where all of the people the Yeerks, she corrected herself who would presumably be staffing this place were, but then the reality of her situation came back to her. Now wasnt the time to think about those kinds of things.

(Left!) came Tobias split-second command.

Banking left with the others, Shara found herself in a room that was almost completely dark. She wished for a moment that she had her own eyes, since darkness was no barrier to them, but she knew that wishing wouldnt do any good. This wasnt time to think, anyway; there was only time for action and reaction.

(Tight circle!) hearing Tobias order, she quickly suited her actions to it. (Tighter! Spiral down; get ready to land!)

Trying to keep her flightpath aligned to what she could see of Tobias, Shara miscalculated. Reacting too slowly to make the next turn, she found herself slamming into the wall on her right and falling to the floor, suddenly as aerodynamic as a brick. From the sounds she was hearing, the others hadnt done much better.

She didnt know quite how to feel about that.

(Everyone okay?) Marco asked, sounding as well as anyone could under the circumstances.

(I have damaged my bird body,) Ax said, clearly having regained his usual composure. (But I am alive.)

(Im all right,) she said, carefully testing her limbs one at a time; a flare of pain in her right wing let her know the extent of her own injuries. (My right wing just snapped, thats all.)

(Yeah, I think I broke my tail,) Marco said; Shara could just see him moving the aforementioned limb.

(Good grief,) Tobias said, sounding annoyed in a good-humored sort of way. (This is the last time I ever fly through a building with you three amateurs.)

(Okay, lets demorph,) Marco said, and Shara silently agreed with him. (Theres no one around, and Ax, Shara, and I arent going to be flying anywhere until we _re_morph.)


	47. Bird Group

She could hear the sounds of distant mayhem through however many walls were now between them and the outside world. _That_ was probably why there hadnt been more people inside these rooms.

(What do you think Rachel morphed?) Tobias asked, as a roar and several muted, concussive thuds echoed back to them. (Elephant or bear?)

(Shed do them both at the same time if she could figure out how,) Marco muttered, sounding wearily annoyed.

Shed already begun demorphing, in the absence of people to see her doing so, and the room was already growing lighter around her as her enhanced vision reasserted itself. She could clearly see Marco and Ax just starting their own demorphs, and as they shed their avian forms, she noticed that Tobias was morphing into a human, while Ax was remaining in his own natural form.

There was probably a reason for that, but as Marco started speaking, she decided that it probably wasnt important.

"You know, sometimes theres just a very fine line between us and the Three Stooges," Marco said, then he turned to look over at her. "Well, Four Stooges, I guess."

(What are stooges?)

Raising an eyebrow, she gestured for Marco to explain; it was bound to be interesting, and shed never been one for slapstick humor. Ax would probably want something more insightful than just "Moe is their leader."

"A stooge is a guy," he looked at her again. "Or a girl. Stupid enough to run around inside a Yeerk stronghold wearing a pair of bike shorts, and accompanied by a Deer-man from outer space, a mouse-eating Bird-boy, and a transforming superhero straight out of Masked Rider. Thats a stooge"

"_Kamen _Rider," she corrected, smirking.

"Huh?"

"Kamen Rider was the original, created by Shotaro Ishinomori," she said, grinning. "Masked Rider was a knock-off."

Marco opened his mouth, but seemed to have nothing to say. Shaking his head, he gave her a sidelong smirk as if it say, you win this round. Then, becoming serious again, more serious than shed ever seen him, in fact, he lead them out of the darkened room. Ax took up position on the right, and so she fell in on the left.

"I cant believe I lived most of my life with these lame human eyes," Tobias grumbled, from the back of their group. "You people are blind."

"Really?" she asked, turning to look back over her shoulder at him. "Youll have to tell me about that sometime."

"You dont count, oh great and powerful shark-slayer," Marco said, gently elbowing her in the ribs. "And keep your voices down, you two. This place may _seem_ empty right now, but this is still enemy territory."

"Roger that, sir," she whispered back, winking at Marco when he turned a fish-eyed look back on her.

Following him as their group crept out into a brightly-lit hallway, Shara blinked as she almost _felt_ her eyes adjusting. There was none of the mild discomfort that she remembered accompanying this kind of transition back when shed actually been human, and she didnt quite know how to feel about that. On the one hand, it was nice not to have to deal with that kind of thing, but on the other, it was yet another reminder of how far removed she was from her former life.

Maybe not as much of a reminder as that transformation of hers, but hard to ignore all the same.

Marco was looking down at the far end of the hall, likely focused on the same door that she herself had just noticed. There couldnt be any mistaking the fact that, whoever was behind that door, they were an important person of one stripe or another. The golden seal on the door made that fact very plain for anyone to see.

"That way," Marco said decisively. "Ax? If anyone pops out of any of these doors"

He didnt even need to finish his sentence; Ax twirled the bladed tip of his tail, in what almost reminded Shara of one of the limbering-up exercises that Gr- her old karate teacher would recommend. Falling into step on Marcos left again, she bent her legs slightly and continued moving. She wanted to have good leverage, just in case it came down to a fight between her and anyone else who might be left in this area.

Standing back up once they had made it to the end of the hall, without being jumped by anyone, she stood by as Marco started to open the door.

"Come in."

Marco froze at that voice; a voice which didnt sound particularly threatening to her sensibilities it wasnt Darkon, after all but which seemed to have some kind of weird power over him. Or maybe he just knew the speaker, and hadnt ever been expecting to see them again. Especially in a place like this.

"I said come in," the woman reiterated, sounding quietly intense; she would have almost said annoyed, but she didnt get that feeling, oddly enough. "Never make me give an order twice. You wont live to hear me give it a third time."

Now _that_ sounded like something Darkon would say.

Taking Marcos hand, she opened the door and lead him through. He looked like he could use the support, and whoever was on the other side of the door didnt sound like they would be willing to tolerate waiting long enough for him to regain his composure.

There was a large desk in the center of an office large enough to make it seem small, and there was a woman sitting behind that desk. She was dark-haired, and dark-eyed; in a strange way, this new woman reminded Shara of her own mother. But her eyes were different; they were the kind of eyes that Darkon would have, missing only the crimson madness of a fully-realized Radam Teknoman.

Nothing else was missing, though. These were the kind of eyes that could watch worlds and all their people die without blinking, or condemn an entire planet to eternal slavery without a flinch. These were eyes without even the slightest scraps of mercy, morality, or kindness; echoing a soul that held that same lack.

This person, whoever they were, was as dangerous as Darkon; she would treat them just the same.


	48. Familial Enemy

"I was expecting four new technicians," she said, calmly looking them both over. "Where are the other two?"

Marco just stood there, staring. She was just about to say something, something that the Human-Controller in front of them since that was what she obviously was would find reassuring, when the woman spoke again.

"Where are the other two who were supposed to come with you down from the Pool ship?"

Before she could begin to think of a plausible, reasonable explanation for someone that she suspected was an inherently unreasonable person, Marco literally shook himself out of his reverie and started to speak.

"The other two? The other two technicians? Oh. Um. They well, they had a bit of a problem. I think Visser Three killed them for doing something wrong."

It was, quite possibly, the most pathetic lie she had ever heard anyone tell in her life. It would have never passed muster with her father. And yet, for some odd reason that she wasnt stupid enough to start questioning, this woman believed it.

She raised an eyebrow, an expression of contempt clear on her face. "If that clown Visser Three thinks he can damage me in the eyes of the Council of Thirteen by sabotaging this project, hes a bigger fool than I thought."

She heard Marco gulp, overlaid by the sounds of combat just outside the walls of the office. They were much louder to her than they would have been to anyone else, she knew, and for a moment she felt the urge to contact her brother and ask how he and the others were doing. That wasnt possible, though; aside from the fact that she would space out and potentially miss whatever other information this Human-Controller might give her, she knew that telepathy made a Teknomans eyes glow when they used it.

Glowing eyes werent anything that could remotely be considered humanlike.

"Were having a bit of a problem with the Andalite Bandits that Visser Three has still failed to exterminate," she said calmly, and Shara remembered just where she had seen this woman before: this was the woman she had seen riding that strange, transparent submarine, the one Rachel had called Visser One.

"I see," she said, in response to Marcos nod. "Obviously your host mind is giving you some trouble. Im sure you are aware that your host body is the biological son of my own host body."

This was said completely without emotion; Darkon would have at least been amused by the plight of his slaves, given the impressions she had gotten of him while she had been trapped in that hellish place he called his own. This was better in some ways, and worse in others. Knowing what she knew now _did_ make her feel a swell of sympathy for what Marco had to be feeling, but she wasnt going to express it in the usual ways.

To say nothing of their current predicament, Marco was enough like Cain that she knew he wouldnt appreciate the sentiment he was likely to mistake her sympathy for.

XXX

She knew; that was all he could focus on. Shara _knew _now; Visser One had told her outright, and now she would pity him for what he was going through. Just like Cassie, or any of the others would if hed allowed them to find out. He was starting to wish hed reacted faster, shutting her out of the room before she could lead him in.

"You seem rather well-disciplined," hi- Visser One said, turning her pitiless gaze on Shara. "See that you keep him in line, if he starts to lose control of his host."

"As you command, Visser One," Shara said, calmly enough that he almost turned to look at her.

"As for you," she said, after giving Shara a nod and an actual approving smile. "You must learn to control your host more completely. My own host is creating an awful racket," she said, tapping her right temple. "But I do not let her weeping and wailing distract me."

"No, Visser," he said, whispering so that his voice wouldnt shake. "I will try harder to control my host."

He hated that filthy slug; hated it with every fiber of his being, and wanted to rip it out of his mothers head and grind it into paste under his heels. He was surprised that both Visser One and Shara couldnt seem to feel the black hatred that was slowly consuming him. To him, it was a nearly-tangible presence in the room.

Hot, thick, and corrosive, the way all hatred seemed to feel.

Attacking would likely be fatal; if not for him and Shara which, given the weird superpowers that Shara had demonstrated against the sharks, he doubted it would be them then to his own mother. He didnt want her dead, not after all he had gone through to save her, so he couldnt attack. All he could do was stand there, arms at his sides, and listen to Visser One herself mock the pain and anguish his mother must have been feeling at seeing her own son as a Yeerk host.

The room reverberated with the sound of something heavy being slammed into the wall, and he tried not to react. He could clearly imagine one of the many Hork-Bajir in this base being tossed aside by a rampaging elephant. The others were clearly raising hell out there.

Visser One barely reacted. "Well then. I suppose I had better see to this little problem outside," she said, sounding only mildly weary. "I have to wrap up this shark project and have a thousand shark-Controllers ready for use on the Leeran home world within two months. I dont need to be pestered by Visser Threes leftover Andalite problems. That incompetent fool will be arriving soon; I only wish these tiresome Andalite bandits would remove that particular annoyance from my life."

She stood up, straightening her hair the way he could always remember her doing before. And he stood there, looking into her eyes, wishing he could say one of the thousands of things that were swirling around in his head; how he was still free, how he was still fighting, how he was going to kill Visser One for what she had done to their family. But any of those would have been fatal to any number of people, and besides that, hed never been the type to do stupid, impulsive, emotional things.

There were times that he wished he was, but it just wasnt in him.

"Get to the lab, the both of you," Visser One said. "Go to work."

She walked out past them, as if shed already dismissed them from her thoughts; as if they were as insignificant as gnats to her. Come to think of it, they probably were. Holding his breath as she made her way out into the hall, he was relived to find that Ax and Tobias were nowhere in sight.

He was relieved; he didnt pause to consider just why, but he was.


	49. Recognition

Just then, through the massive, round porthole on his right, Marco caught a glimpse of a new player in their little game. This new apparition was long, sinuous, and poison-yellow. A waterborne snake that was bigger than any Taxxon hed seen in his life, with a mouth that could swallow a small boat.

The snake was making slow, inexorable progress toward the facility. On either side, like some kind of honor guard, came Hork-Bajir in bizarre red diving-suits. They were propelled by jets that looked like theyd be perfectly at home on a torpedo, and they were traveling just a few feet back from the sinuous, undulating snake.

Marco had a feeling he knew just _who_ was coming to pay them a visit.

Turning, he paused a moment to wait for Shara, then followed his- Visser One out into the hall. She didnt turn, didnt look back, just swaggered on like the Yeerk commander she was. Feeling a tug on his left shoulder, he turned to look back at Shara.

"Dont let yourself get distracted, Marco," she said firmly. "We still have a lot of things to do."

If hed been expecting anything else, it was blown right out of his head by what she actually _said_. "Youre right," he said, with a sharp nod. "Lets go to work."

Maybe it wasnt so bad to have Shara in on his secret, after all.

Ducking into a side-door, he quickly looked the room over. What he could see of it, anyway; it was pretty much just as dark as the room that they had all "landed" in a few minutes ago. He could see moving lights in the dark behind him, and when he looked back over at Shara, he saw that the lights were her pinkish eyes. Which was weird, even for him.

The Animorphs were pretty much the reigning champs of the weird-o-limpics, but even _their_ eyes didnt glow in the dark.

The sound of something fast-moving in the air, followed by the meaty _slap_ of impacting body parts, alerted him to the fact that something had just happened.

"Ax, hasnt anyone ever told you that its a bad habit to attack your own allies?" Shara demanded, sounding only semi-serious.

(How,) the Andalite sputtered, and as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light in the room, Marco saw the reason. (How did you do that, Shara?)

"I have good reflexes," she said calmly.

Which was, of course, the understatement of _all time_. Axs tail moved faster than the eye could see up until it hit something, and here Shara was with that same tail _clenched in her fist_; her hand around the base of the blade so Ax couldnt even cut her.

"Has anyone told you that youre one of the most abnormal things in the history of abnormal things?" he asked, still a bit wobbly from actually having seen the impossible done right in front of him.

"I am not a _thing_, Marco," she said tolerantly, then turned to look with those glowing, pinkish eyes at him. "And youre a fine one to talk about being abnormal," she said with a wink.

"We were just trying to figure out whether we should go and rescue you two, or go join the fight outside," Tobias said, his now-unfamiliar human voice drawing attention back to the matters at hand.

(We accessed the central computer for this facility,) Ax said calmly, now that Shara had released her hold on his tail; he was still shooting glances at her with his stalk-eyes, though. (However, before we could discover anything, you two came in.)

Ax lead them both over to a glowing, three-dimensional computer display. He thought it was kind of funny, the way this place looked like any normal, boring office that you would find in a building somewhere. Like an insurance agent, or a secretarys; the Yeerks, of course, wouldnt want to bother with Human-level computers.

He heard a roar; either Jake or Slade, but whoever they were, they didnt sound good.

"We need to get out there and help them," Tobias said, gritting his teeth.

"No," he snapped, cutting that line of thought off before it could really begin. "They cant be helped by us rushing out there. Visser Three is coming here with more Hork-Bajir. Hes morphed this giant snake from planet Whatever."

The rest of them even Shara looked at him like he was nuts. He didnt care.

"Look, its him, okay? I saw the thing through the porthole. A huge, yellow sea snake with Hork-Bajir alongside. Who _else_ do you think that would be?"

(He cannot have had time to hear about a battle down here,) Ax pointed out. (This is too quick to be a rescue mission.)

"I dont think it _is_ a rescue mission. I think its a coincidence. I think he was just on his way over here."

"Well, thats just our bad luck," Tobias scoffed.

"Maybe not," he pointed out. "Visser One and Three are rivals; Visser one let us escape to mess with Visser Three. This just might work out for us. But, first things first: Ax? Start questioning that computer."

There had to be something wrong with being so calm while Jake and the other Animorphs were out there in the halls fighting for their lives. Still, hed gotten a good, long look at the pure, uncaring ruthlessness of the Yeerks. Hed seen in Visser Ones eyes; heard it in the pitiless voice that had spoken of his being potentially enslaved by the Yeerks.

There were clearly times when you needed to be as ruthless as the enemy you were fighting; to kill before you could _be_ killed.

(Its as we surmised,) Ax said, staring at the screen with his main eyes as his stalk eyes scanned the room, occasionally settling on Shara. (The Yeerks are invading the Leeran homeworld. It is not going well for them. Most of the Leerans are resisting. Since the Leerans are psychic, its impossible for the Yeerks to deceive them. So the Yeerks have decided to forget about stealth and go for a straight invasion by force.)

"But its a watery world, so they cant rely on Hork-Bajir," he said, folding his arms.

"So the hammerheads are being reengineered to allow the Yeerks to make Controllers out of them," Shara said, stepping forward to peer more closely at the display. "The sharks are meant to be shock-troops in the war for Leera."

"Thats great," Tobias snapped, already starting to demorph. "_Now _can we get out there and help Rachel and the others?"

"Ax, can you find a way to remove these things in our heads?" he asked, ignoring the demorphing Tobias and the impassive Shara.

Ax paused for a moment, probably communicating with the computer. (There _is_ a liquidation program in place, but it is heavily encrypted. The only other way that the implants can be liquidated is in the event that this facility is completely destroyed.)

"_What_? You cant eliminate these implants without blowing the whole place up?" Tobias demanded.

(Yes. It is there so that there would be nothing left behind if something goes wrong. However, we simply have no way of destroying this facility.)

"Yeah, I dont think even _Shara_ could do something like that," he said thoughtfully. "No offense," he said, turning a sidelong glance on the girl in question.

"None taken," she said, sounding like she was preoccupied by something else.

"Ax?" he asked, opting to leave Shara to think about whatever it was that she was thinking about in peace. "How do the Yeerks keep the water out of this place? I mean, how do they keep it from flooding? If it was just air-pressure, our ears would be seriously imploding here."

(Force fields, I presume,) the Andalite said calmly. (Modulated to hold the water back, while allowing animal lifeforms to enter and leave.)

"Theyd also have to have some way of getting the ships and that submarine through the forcefield without disrupting it," Shara mused.

(That would be simple enough, even for Yeerk technology.)

"Can you reach the controls?" he asked the Andalite, not wanting the conversation to go off on some kind of irrelevant tangent if he could stop it.

(Done,) Ax said, once hed finished fiddling with the computer.

"Can you turn off the force fields?" he asked. "Without letting the Yeerks know that its happening?"

(I am an Andalite,) Ax said, with a derisive laugh. (No simple, derivative, unimaginative Yeerk computer poses any difficulties to me. Not unless its been specifically shielded.)

__

Not exactly what I wanted to hear. Then again, the chances that this particular computer was specifically shielded against tampering were next to nil. Still, there was always that small chance of failure that you had to look square in the eye if you wanted to get anything done right.

(What are you doing?) Tobias demanded, fully demorphed and perched on Sharas right shoulder at this point. (You let that water come gushing in and well _all _be killed.)

"Destroy the facility and it just might trigger the liquidation program for these head implants the Yeerks slapped into us," he countered. "Ax, can you build in a five-minute time delay?"

(Five minutes?) he asked, pausing for a moment to give the computer some more orders. (Done. In five minutes, millions of your gallons of water will come flooding into this facility.)

(Wed better all have gills before then,) Tobias said, turning his fierce hawks stare on the three of them.

"Yeah," he said, trying to sound harsh, tough, and unemotional; he didnt much feel it, but it would help if the others _saw_ him that way. "And everyone who cant grow gills; I guess theyll wish they could."

"Lets get going, then," Shara said, already beginning to morph.

"Were outta here," he agreed, turning away from the computer.


	50. Animal Warfare

They morphed or in Sharas case, finished morphing as they ran, and soon Marco found himself a gorilla running beside a leopard. His gorilla morph wasnt exactly the most aggressive member of the Animorphs weird little zoo, in fact it was almost placid; more interested in finding some fruit and a nice place to lie down than in mixing it up with the Yeerks in the main areas of the facility. The presence of the leopard on his right side made the gorilla in his mind uneasy, though.

But he wasnt just some ordinary, run-of-the-mill gorilla; he was Marco with the body of a gorilla. He wasnt feeling particularly placid, either. Throwing open the door forgetting for that one, crucial moment just what morph he was in hard enough that it tore free from its hinges entirely, Marco and Shara beheld a scene of devastation.

Injured Hork-Bajir were crumpled on the floor; a mutilated, crushed Taxxon was being eaten alive by one of its fellow Taxxons; and everywhere the sounds, and smells, of chaos and carnage. Rachel, a grizzly; Jake, a tiger; Cassie, a wolf; and Slade, a panther, had done some serious damage to the Yeerks forces in the area. But now, the four of them were driven into a corner, almost surrounded by wary but determined Hork-Bajir.

Visser One was striding up to the besieged Animorphs, kicking the Hork-Bajir in her way as she came. The expression on her face as she made her way down the hall was one of apathy, except for when she was trying to rally her troops. Then, as she stared down at them, kicking them to make them get back on their feet, the apathy was replaced with a look of clear contempt.

Visser One already had six Hork-Bajir gathered around her, and more looked ready to come; it wasnt a good situation, not at all.

(Five minutes,) Marco said tersely. (Less, really. Then we have to be in the water.)

(With gills,) Tobias reminded them all; not that they werent all thinking that same thought.

(Okay, lets go save Jake,) he said, with a self-mockingly weary sigh. (That guy. Hes always needing me to come along and save his ass.)

(Ill be surprised if he makes it past puberty,) Shara said, sounding amused.

(Did you just quote _The Rock_?) he asked, surprised.

(You started it,) she said with a chuckle.

Since there was really nothing he could say to that, and since they were all moving out already, he didnt say anything in response. Not to _that_ anyway.

(At least I can introduce Visser One to my tail!) Ax exclaimed, gleefully charging forward with said appendage held high; it almost looked like he was twitching the blade in anticipation.

(No!) he yelled; then, realizing what he must have sounded like, he backtracked. (I mean, you guys go and help the others. Ill clean up Visser One and her little cronies.)

(Ill back you up,) Shara said; her, he could tolerate. (Better to have someone to watch your back when youre up against someone _that_ dangerous.)

They slammed into the rear of the group of Hork-Bajir following Visser One; too fast for any of the unprepared Controllers to react. Slamming a Hork-Bajir with his fist, a fist the approximate size and weight of a cinderblock, he watched in grim satisfaction as the alien went down. And _stayed _down.

Another nearby Hork-Bajir, spinning to meet him, swung his wrist blade. He didnt get far; Shara clamped down on his arm and shook it like a dog with a bone. With a silent thanks to her, Marco slammed his fist into the things chest, and watched as it went down just like the other one.

Out of the corner of his eye, even as he watched the rest of the Hork-Bajir pull back hastily, he saw Shara bite the throat of their opponent; something told him that he wouldnt have to worry about that one anymore.

"Kill them, you cowards!" Visser One raged. "Theyre only two Andalites! Kill them!"

One of the Hork-Bajir leaped at him, arms and legs with their complement of deadly blades flashing in the lights. He tried to dodge; he wasnt nearly stupid enough to stand under a falling Hork-Bajir, but gorillas werent exactly built for speed. Leopards, on the other hand; well, that was a different story.

Before the alien Controller could finish his leap, Shara was on him, claws and fangs cutting into his flesh even as her strength pushed him back and away from the main area of the action. Even before Shara let the Hork-Bajirs mangled, brutalized body fall to the floor, Marco was punching one of his compatriots that had foolishly tried to attack while he was alone. That Hork-Bajir was slammed into the ground, and then swiftly finished off by Shara.

Grabbing the necks of two other nearby Hork-Bajir, Marco slammed them into one another and left them to attempt to disentangle themselves. With the greater part of their group laying on the floor, the few remaining ambulatory Hork-Bajir abruptly decided that they had had enough. They ran without even a look back.

"So, Andalites," Visser One said, bereft of her allies at the end. "I see that you are enjoying the use of all these wonderful morphs that Earth has to offer. However, you both must know that your little band will never be able to escape from this place. However, if you both surrender peacefully, then I will allow you to live."

__

Not a word, Marco, he reminded himself, just to have something to focus on. _Not. One. Word._ There was nothing he could say to that nothing he could say to _her_ that wouldnt give away the fact that he wasnt who or what she thought he was. If he said one thing, just one, then everything he was keeping in would just spill out; everything he had ever wanted to say since she had disappeared. The mundane and the monumental, the inane and the insightful, and everything in-between.

And then, all of the other Animorphs would die or _worse_ for his carelessness.

(So, what did you have in mind?) Shara asked, coming to stand beside him and then bearing her fangs at Visser One.

(What?) he asked, his train of thought derailed.

(Well, youre the one how always seems to have some sort of plan,) she said reasonably. (Or are you planning to wing it this time?)

"If you kill me, then the both of you will die as well, Andalites," Visser One said, her eyes flickering between him and Shara, but also seeming to flicker with some suppressed emotion.

Or, maybe he was just grasping at straws.

"_Ha tu ma el ga su fa to li,_" was what the new apparition standing next to Visser One actually _said_, but it sounded entirely different in Marcos head: _Dont be fooled, Visser One. Those two are not Andalites._

Spinning in place, even as he glimpsed Shara turning with him to face this new threat, Marco saw the Leeran-Controller that had been with Visser One on the sub. He could have killed it without breaking a sweat, either of them could, but he just stared at Visser One.

__

They are not Andalites, the Leeran reiterated. _They are human._ It paused, its backlit, green eyes fixing on Shara. _For the most part._

"No, you idiot," Visser One sneered. "The gorilla morph that one of them is using might be distantly related to humans, but the leopard is a member of the feline family. The only way that that creature could even be _tangentially _related to humans is by the fact that they are both mammals. These are Andalites in morph."

__

I beg your pardon for disagreeing with you, my Visser, however-

The Leeran stopped talking then, silenced by the simple fact that Marco had just punched the thing right in the mouth. And then, not a few moments after that had happened, a huge, poison-yellow serpent reared up out of the waters of a nearby dock.


	51. Politicos

"Visser Three, I presume," Visser One said, her contempt of the other obvious.

(Well now, I see youve made a mess of things, Visser One. Our old friends the Andalite bandits seem to be annihilating most of your troops.)

"Id have more troops, but for your interference!" Visser One snarled. "And if you werent incompetent and a traitor to the empire youd have cleaned these vermin up before now!"

(No doubt the Council of Thirteen will enjoy hearing your excuses for failure,) Visser Three purred, his snakes head grinning evilly down at her.

"What the Council will hear is how _you_ have allowed a handful of morphing Andalites to ravage our forces unchecked!" Visser One shouted back up at him, either unaware or uncaring of the potential danger.

(Youll lose Leera for us yet, you half-human fool!) Visser Three sneered.

"Like youve already lost Earth?" Visser One needled. "Despite the fact that I handed it over to you in perfect shape?"

(What are they _doing_?) Shara asked, staring at the two bickering Vissers in stunned incomprehension.

(I think theyre politicking,) Marco said, fighting a sudden urge to laugh.

(Oh,) she said, sounding amused herself. (I think we might be able to jump Visser Three while hes blathering, if youre up for it.)

(You know, I think you might be right,) he said, actually starting to consider the idea.

Before they could begin to finalize their nascent plan, a loud, harsh, extremely grating alarm went off. Accompanying the strident wailing of the klaxons and the flashing of the lights was an electronic voice, bellowing updates to the facility through the various speakers:

"Warning. Warning. Containment fields will shut down in three minutes. Extreme hazard. Countdown beginning. Countdown will be in intervals of ten seconds. Thank you and have a nice day!"

(That wasnt what I was expecting,) Shara said, looking up at the nearest bunch of speakers.

(That was just _weird_,) Marco said, then he shook himself. (Cmon. we need to get to the others.)

(Right.)

"Containment failure in two minutes and fifty seconds. Have a nice day!"

(Water rushing in, and youre stuck in that weak human body, Visser One,) Visser Three crowed, laughing gleefully. (Is that my promotion I see coming?)

Visser One was clearly seething, red with fury, but she turned and ran for the computer room that theyd just come out of not so long ago.

(Yes, youd better go and turn off your computer,) Visser Three mocked. (If you are able! These Andalites are clever devils with computers, you know,) he said, laughing with depraved glee.


	52. Countdown to Fatality

"Containment failure in two minutes and forty seconds! Have a nice day!"

They ran on, he and Shara, up to the rest of the Animorphs, where Rachel was just tossing aside a crumpled, severely mauled Hork-Bajir.

(Nice of you two to finally drop by,) she snapped. (Did one of you at least get rid of Visser One for us?)

(No,) he said curtly; not feeling quite up to dealing with Rachel yet, after Sharas easy sympathy.

(You okay?) Jake asked privately.

(No, not really. But what we have to focus on right now is getting out of here.) _I can deal with Shara knowing_, especially since the girl in question hadnt acted at all like one of the others probably would. _But all of thats for later; if we dont get out of this complex right now, we never will._

(Ax, look out!) he shouted, but the Andalite was already moving.

(I am not a human, Marco,) he said calmly. (Its not so easy to sneak up on me.)

"Containment failure in two minutes and ten seconds! Have a nice day!"

Rearing back up to strike once more, Visser Three moved faster this time. Jumping to the left, out of the range of Visser Threes morph, Ax tried to bring his tail to bear on the snakes head. But the debris-strewn floor of the facility stymied him; one hoof caught on a broken piece of wall, and he stumbled.

(Got you!) Visser Three crowed with triumphant glee, his morphs jaws closing around the Andalite.

But then, the Visser stopped. The reason for his halt was readily apparent: an angry grizzly and an equally angry leopard were both facing him down. The grizzly, Rachel, had his midsection in her powerful grip. The leopard, Shara, was on her hind legs, with her rail-spike claws bared dangerously close to the Vissers left eye.

(Let him go,) Rachel growled, sounding almost like the bear whose body she was borrowing. (Let him go, or Ill rip you in two.)

(And, if you dont do it quickly, Ill rip your eye right out of your head,) Shara snarled.

(Its a standoff, Andalites,) Visser Three said, sounding remarkably calm for the position he was in. (You have me, and I have your fellow terrorist here. But the water will be pouring in soon, and youll drown in those bodies.)

(Im losing what little patience I have with you, Visser,) Shara said, digging her claws into the flesh beside his eye, just deep enough to be considered a warning. A warning that drew blood.

(Let him go!) Rachel simply reiterated, tightening her grip until the alien snake that was Visser Three began to lose more of his dull, yellow-and-green blood.

(I guess we have a negotiation here,) Visser Three said silkily,

(Negotiate _this_,) Marco snapped, slamming his fist into the Vissers snout with the full force that the muscles of his gorilla morph could give him.

The Vissers jaw flew open, his eyes widened, stretching the skin that Shara had punctured. He remained, swaying indecisively for a few moments, before hitting his head on the ground. Bleeding, and clinging tenaciously to consciousness by sheer force of will alone, Visser Three slithered back into the water and was soon gone.

(Thank you,) Ax said calmly, as his body continued to drip green slime onto the damaged floor.

"Containment failure in one minute and forty seconds! Have a nice day!"

(We have to get out of here!) Marco yelled, the fact of Visser Threes escape driven from his mind by the Animorphs need to do the same.

(Time to bail, boys and girls!) Tobias concurred, flapping his way off the head of a screaming Hork-Bajir.

"Containment failure suspended at one minute and forty seconds! Have a nice day!"

(What the?)

(Its Visser One!) Cassie exclaimed, loping over to the rest of them, with Slade keeping pace on her right. They both looked worse for wear, after the fight they had been put through; the cuts and the blood matted in their fur was less noticeable on Slade, but the smell of it was thick in the air.

(You should have finished her off when you had the chance!) Rachel hissed, directing her anger to both of them; Marco, however, took it more personally, since for him it was. (Ill take care of this from now on!)

Falling back to all-fours, Rachel barreled in the direction of the building that Visser One his mother had just entered. The one where Ax had futzed with the computers in an effort to get the Yeerk-made implants out of their heads; the one where his mother would live or die depending on what he did next. Ax followed close on her heels.


	53. Hostage Situation

(Marco, you know what theyre going to do when they catch up to her,) Jake said, low and urgent and just for him.

(Yeah, Jake, I know,) he said, nodding his thickset gorilla head.

(What do you plan to do about this, Marco?) Shara asked, once again speaking just to him. (You have to know that my brother isnt one to show mercy to anyone he thinks is an enemy.)

(I know that, too,) he said, thinking of the way Slade had "handled" those security guards at The Gardens.

(Its your call,) Jake said, and he almost could have been participating in a three-way conversation between him, Shara and Marco himself, but neither of them knew that other was talking; that was funny, really it was.

Standing there, frozen, as Rachel, Ax, and Slade three brutally intense killers when the situation called for it reached the door of the building where his mother, and where Visser One, had taken refuge to work out the little problem theyd set up with the computer, he found he couldnt move; and he couldnt look away.

(Jake? You take the others and morph, all right? I have to go and I dont know.)

(Go,) Jake said kindly. (Well have gills in about a minute. Marco?)

(Yeah?)

(Do whats right,) Jake said firmly. (Forget about what anybody else thinks. Do whats right.)

It figured; Jake was one of those guys that had as easy a time being a hero as they did breathing. That was his answer to everything: do whats right. He always seemed to know what that was, too; another thing that made him a hero.

Marco himself, however; well, he was a comedian. All he knew was what was funny. And what wasnt.

Running for the building where the final battle, the _only_ battle, was about to take place, Marco ripped the door from its hinges, bounded over the broken door, and confronted the sight beyond. It wasnt a hopeful one: his moth- Visser One had managed to get her hands on a Dracon beam, sure, but Slade had his jaws clamped on her forearm and was shaking it hard enough that she barely had any chance of aiming.

(Hold her there for me, Slade,) Rachel said, sounding satisfied. (Ill finish this.)

(Right,) Slade said calmly, raising both forepaws and digging his claws into Viss-his Mo- Visser Ones arm so he could hold her fast.

Rachel bellowed, whether in triumph or in challenge Marco wasnt quite sure, and charged on all-fours. Rearing back up once she had made it into striking-range, Rachel raised her huge, dagger-tipped paw for a swing that would end with Visser Ones his mothers head being torn from her body to fly across the room.

(NO!) he shouted, knuckle-walking farther into the room, but making sure to stay out of range of either an angry bear or a bloodthirsty Tekno-panther.

(Shut it, Marco!) Rachel snapped, not even looking at him, her paw still up in the air.

(I said no! Dont do it!)

(She is a Yeerk Visser,) Ax pointed out calmly.

(Shes the enemy, Marco,) Slade said, not sounding nearly so patient. (She dies. Its that simple.)

(No,) he said, trying to sound more reasonable this time. (Shes my mother.)

It seemed like forever before anyone moved again, well, everyone who wasnt Visser One, anyway. She tried to gouge Slades morphs eyes out with her thumb; Slade batted her hand away with a paw. She ended up with a slashed, bleeding thumb for her trouble.

(Your mothers dead,) Rachel said, as she finally lowered her paw.

(No; I thought she was. This is her. Or it _was_ her. And maybe it will be again someday if; if she lives.)

(Slade, let her go,) Rachel said finally.

(All right,) Slade said, oddly with no hesitation at all.

Unclamping his jaws, Slade pulled his claws free from Visser Ones arm and stepped back a pace.

(Thanks, you two.)

(Marco, she remains a danger to us,) Ax said, not one to be easily convinced of the trustworthiness of a Yeerk.

(Maybe not,) Marco said, pointing to the window. (Look out there.)

Beyond the round, blister-window of the facility, Visser Three in his still-wounded sea serpent morph was circling warily.

(He just saw us spare her life,) Marco continued calmly. (How do you think Visser Three would interpret that?)

(Hell think shes a traitor,) Ax said, instantly grasping the implications of their mercy as Visser Three would see them. (Its what he wants to believe, in any case. And when he reports that we let her live, it will be all the evidence he needs.)


	54. Telling Secrets

(Im sorry, Marco,) Rachel said, sounding more reasonable for the time she had had to calm down. (I didnt know.)

(Shut up, Xena,) he snapped, not in the mood for pity; he almost wished Shara was here instead.

(Hey, I was trying to be nice,) she said, sounding indignant.

(I know. So shut up.) He _really_ wished Shara were here instead.

While Marco and Rachel had been talking, Ax had gone over to the computer to see if there was anything that he could do about the facilitys still being intact. (Shes locked me out,) he reported. (It could take me ten minutes to bypass the new security measures.)

XXX

She didnt know just _why_ these Andalites had decided to show such a dangerous enemy as her mercy, but she would personally see to it that the fools all suffered for it. Starting with that filth in the panther morph who had been chewing on her arm. Rolling, ignoring both the pain in her hosts lower arm and the annoying sounds that her host was making, she brought her Dracon beam to bear on the head of the Andalite in his panther morph.

One of the others, the one in the gorilla morph that that idiot Leeran had insisted was a human for some unfathomable reason, threw a chair at her then. The fool missed her, but what he struck was nearly as damaging in the long run. The window in her office was cracked; a small crack, yes, but with the full force of the water pressing down on it, that crack would not be small for long.

Flinching back instinctively she did not want to _die_ killing one of the Andalites she squeezed the trigger on reflex. Without the time to properly re-aim, however, her shot missed and she was left at the mercy of the Andalites in the bear and panther morphs. It was an absurd concept, mercy from Andalites, but perhaps

XXX

As his mother fell to the ground, after a blow to the head each from Slade and Rachel, he breathed again. Hed seen what those two could do in a fight, but those blows had been just hard enough to knock her out without killing her.

(That window is about to break,) Ax said urgently.

(We have to get out of here!) Rachel shouted, already starting to move away toward the door. (Right now!)

(I have to save her!) he countered, starting forward before Slade moved to block his path.

(Run, you idiot!) Rachel shouted. (Or no one will be saved!)

As if to punctuate her statement, the window exploded then, the force of the water throwing glass shrapnel into the flooding office even as it scoured every last piece of the window free from its frame. Marco was knocked off his feet before he could think, and even Slade with his lower center of gravity and four stout, strong legs, was forced to relax and go with the flow to avoid suffering a similar fate.

Visser Three himself was yanked into the office, the strength of his morph no match for the pure power of the deluge. The office door, already detached from its moorings, was swept up by the tide and carried along. Slade, only able to keep himself upright and oriented forward by sheer muscle-power and even that would fail him before long breathed deeply and tried to think of the best course of action.

It wasnt easy; as an Enforcer Teknoman, he almost instinctively looked to his superiors for orders, but even he could see that Marco wasnt in the best shape to give commands at the moment; Cassie and Jake were likely in similar straits. So, best to just survive for the moment; that was the first thing, always: survive, and then seek orders.

Marco wasnt really paying attention to the others right at that moment, least of all Slade. When the water had spread out, losing some of its brutal force along the way, he paused to take stock of where he was; he barely let the structure of the docks register in his mind once he saw something more important: his mother was there; floating face-down about three-hundred feet or so from him.

He tried to swim out to her, to try to take her back with them, but she was too far; and the current was too strong in any case.

(Morph!) Rachel yelled; but hed already been doing that.

He could see Rachel melting and mutating out of her bear body, and Slade, with lingering panther features, moving through the foaming water with swift, powerful strokes. Beyond the two of them, however, he could see something else. The Leeran; moving through the mad, foaming waves with more skill than even Slade, as if its body its _tentacles_ really were perfectly adapted for resisting the power of the current.

The Leeran was headed directly for his mother; he didnt know why. Maybe to save her, maybe to kill her; maybe just so Visser Three could enjoy watching her suffer before she died. He wouldnt know; because the waves swept him under the dock then, forcing him deeper and deeper into the water. His eyes and lungs both burning, Marco forced them closed and searched for the shark DNA within him.

He had to morph; he wouldnt die without saving her.


	55. Splashdown

Kicking her tail, Shara circled restlessly. Not just for the fact that she couldnt stop moving without risking suffocation; she was worried for Marco. The last shed heard of him, hed confronted his mother in front of Rachel, Ax, and her own brother; that couldnt have been good for him, he was too much like Cain to want people to know about his personal problems.

No matter what kind of help they could offer.

(Here they come!)

She almost asked Cassie to repeat that; but when she turned to look out into the water, she saw them: the enhanced Hammerheads were back. There were six of them, this time, so at least the odds were on their side, but Shara didnt think she could risk transforming at this depth. She would need to return to her human form before she could, and doing so at this depth well, that would probably cause more problems than it solved, in the end.

For all that the sharks were outnumbered, they were still dangerous.

Marco, however, didnt seem to care how dangerous these sharks were; thrashing the water with his tail, he propelled himself forward into battle. Twisting himself sideways, in what she thought was a very respectable feint given the circumstances, he opened his mouth wide and delivered a crushing, slicing bite to his enemys flank.

(Yes!) he shouted, his rage and bloodlust perfectly clear, and perfectly understandable from where she stood. (Yes! Come and get some more, you monsters!)

(Marco, stop it!) Jake demanded; she sighed inwardly, it looked like she was the only one who understood him. (Shara, come help me.)

(Jake, I dont think that you-)

(Now _really_ isnt the time, Shara,) he said, darting out into the fray and slamming into Marcos side hard enough to knock him off his previous course.

XXX

When the other shark slammed into him, knocking him sideways while his opponent made good his escape, Marco turned toward the other shark. One Hammerhead was as good as another, as far as he was concerned.

(Its me, Marco,) Jake said; he stopped. (Its me. Theyre leaving; theyve all broken off. Theyve lost the signal from the facility, and theyre all escaping.) Mad as he was, he wasnt going to take it out on Jake; not yet, anyway. (Its over now, Marco. Lets get out of here.)

The last of the bloodlust was gone; fading in the wake of his human rationality and pragmatism. The last of the Yeerk-engineered sharks were evacuating, to maybe be found someday or not, and the facility was done for. The last of the contained atmosphere was escaping; huge bubbles of it roiling the sea in its wake as explosions rocked the seabed.

The hologram vanished entirely, as the eight of them put everything they had into escaping from the horror theyd unleashed at the Yeerks underwater shark-Controller factory. As he caught a glimpse of Visser Threes water-snake morph from planet Whatever slithering away through the sea, he felt an odd, not-entirely-unpleasant sensation in his head.

The control implants were dissolving, just the way Ax had said they would when the facilitys computer had decided that there was no way to save the project. The Yeerks were good at destroying evidence, he reflected; the chips in all of the altered Hammerheads were gone now. No fisherman, no marine biologist, would ever catch a shark that had alien technology implanted in its head.

(Were done here,) Cassie said, sounding relieved at the prospect.

(Yeah. And, we can at least hope that Visser One didnt manage to slime her way out,) Tobias said, with a definite edge to his thought-speak voice. (Id like to think shes still down there somewhere, trying to figure out how to hold her breath under all that water.)

It was just the kind of thing that he would have said, under any other circumstances.

But they knew now; Rachel, Jake and Ax, and Shara and Slade. Shara wouldnt tell anyone who didnt already know, shed as good as told him so herself; but that didnt hold for Jake, or Rachel. Rachel would tell Cassie, if Jake didnt first, and pretty soon the whole group would know about it.

They would know what he had tried to keep from them for so long; and he knew that he couldnt count on the same discreet, gentle sympathy from the others that he got from Shara. They would pity him, and he would hate it. Cassie in particular; the only one he didnt have to expect that kind of thing from was Slade, and that wasnt nearly comforting enough in the face of what he was going to have to deal with from now on.

They would all go back to their normal lives, well, some of them would, but nothing would ever really be the same again. All of the others would know what he what he went through, every time he was forced to confront one of Visser Ones plans, knowing that she herself would be there to oversee them. They would know that his heart was breaking with every day the two of them were separated.

They would know everything, and they would pity him for it all. He felt a profound sense of defeat settle over him, waiting for someone, anyone, to say something comforting. Something that they never would have said to him if they hadnt known what they knew now.

(Hey, I just heard something,) Rachel said; not anything like what hed been expecting. (Mechanical. Like hey! Its the same sound that sub made. The transparent sub. I heard its engines.)

(I dont hear anything,) Tobias said, sounding like he didnt quite believe it.

(I dont think you would,) Shara said. (Its coming from more over this way, closer to Rachel and me.)

__

He hadnt heard anything, either; and while Shara wasnt the type to indulge him for the sake of pity, he didnt know entirely _what_ Rachel would do. There was a lot more to Rachel than met the eye, these days; maybe there always had been. No one could ever predict just what shed do, at least _he_ couldnt.

(Thanks, Xena,) he said; one last test.

(Thanks? For _what_?) Rachel sneered; passed. (For hearing that sub? For paying more attention than you, Marco? You know, possibly the reason I notice more than you do, Marco, is the fact that I dont use half my brain making dumb jokes and the other half laughing at them.)

He had to chuckle at that one; point to Rachel, he supposed. It was a good shot, and he didnt mine the ones that were at his expense, just so long as they were funny.


	56. Communality

(Ill ask you this just one more time, and then never again, because I know how you are about people feeling sorry for you,) Jake said, speaking just for the two of them. (Are you okay, Marco?)

Now _there_ was one for the ages; was he okay. There were about a million things he could say, if he were a different person, or if the circumstances werent what they were. But he was who he was, and things were what they were; and that was okay, for the most part.

(Im fine, Jake. And Ill be better. When shes free again.)

Another shark sidled up to him then, brushing sandpaper skin to sandpaper skin. (Its hard, you know, to look into the eyes of someone you love, and know that they would kill you without a second thought.)

(Dont talk like you know me,) he jibbed, feeling like he would have smiled if hed been capable of it in the slightest.

Shara laughed, though she didnt sound particularly happy. (I was talking about _me_.)

Again with the defying of his expectations; today just seemed to be the day for it. (Well, you know, if you ever want to, uh, talk, you know where to find me.)

(If you really want to listen, I will,) she said, sounding morose. (But you should know what youre asking.)

She didnt say anything else after that, but he didnt ask; theyd find each other again when the time came. When she was ready to talk, he would be ready to listen. It was the least he could do after all shed done for him.

They all headed back to the beach, demorphing once they stood together in the shallows, and he watched as she, Cassie and Slade joined up with each other to morph birds and head back to the barn. He didnt think hed have been all that willing to stay in Cassies barn, not even with his meals delivered by Cassie, the way she had said she was doing. Shara was a lot more dedicated to the Animorphs than even _he_ was; but then, it seemed like she also had a lot less to lose.

Her brother didnt really remember her, and none of the other family members hed heard about from Jake had even seemed to be there at all. Under the circumstances, Marco could understand her dedication. He might have been like that himself, if things had been different.

In the air, looking down at all of the people moving around in the neighborhood that he and his dad now lived in, he couldnt help but wonder just what Shara would have to say when she showed up. He knew she was going to; they understood each other too well for him to believe she would do anything else.

She knew not to pity him, and he knew not to expect pity from her; she was the one to stand beside him when hed been forced to confront Visser One, and hed seen the beginnings of understanding in her eyes.

He hadnt recognized it for what it was, not right then; not with so many other things pressing down on him, all clamoring for his attention. But thinking back, he knew that that was what it had been. They were the same; she would come.

Landing on his windowsill, he looked back out into the sky. She probably wouldnt come during the day; too much chance of his dad coming in, or of them being overheard. Then again, since she would probably be in morph when she came to see him, she could always just stick to using thought-speak.

Then again, staying in morph wasnt exactly the most comfortable way to hold a conversation. And that wasnt even mentioning the risk of going over the two-hour time limit while they were speaking. No, she would probably demorph before she started speaking in earnest.

There were good and bad things about that, but then that was true of pretty much everything.

XXX

Once shed demorphed in the hayloft, turning to survey the barn for a moment, as her brother demorphed behind her, Shara thought about what she was going to do next. Go talk with Marco, likely as not; hed seemed genuinely interested in what had happened to her. More than that, even with all of the similarities to the people shed lost, Marco was clearly his own person. She wouldnt feel like she was ripping open old wounds while she was speaking with him.

And she needed to talk to someone about this, she would lose her mind otherwise. But, not someone who didnt know what it was like to face a family member who would kill you without remorse if they were given the order. None of the others that she knew of, anyway seemed to have that problem. But more than that, Marco reminded her of Cain.

That was one more reason to confide in him, over and above all of the other reasons. It may not have been the most rational of reasons, but trust was hardly rational to begin with. Marco was really the closest thing she had to one of her brothers; closer by far than Slade, who barely remembered her as it was.

She would confide in him; it seemed almost right to do so.


	57. That Which is Lost

When he was finally able to sit on his bed as a human again, Marco spread out and flopped bonelessly down on it. He didnt know quite when Shara was going to come, but he didnt feel up to dealing with anyone right at the moment. He was sure she would respect that, if she did choose to come now.

Finally feeling rested enough to haul himself up and out of bed, Marco headed for the shower. He wanted to get the smell of seawater out of his hair, and his clothes, before his dad got home to wonder about it. The man might not have been the most observant of people, but he was far from stupid, and Marco didnt want to end up having to explain the weird scent on him if he could avoid it.

Closing the bathroom door behind him, Marco stripped down to his morphing outfit and turned on the water so it could heat up. Tossing his clothes into the back of the tub, directly under the main force of the spray from the angled showerhead, he removed the last of his clothes and tossed them into a pile at the edge of the bathroom rug.

Climbing into the steaming shower, he adjusted the water until it was at a more comfortable temperature, and then started to wash up.

XXX

Once theyd both been fed, and Slade had fallen asleep, Shara mentally debated about whether or not she would go talk to Marco today. His father would probably be home, though, and it wouldnt do at all for the man to come in during their conversation. Still, there were other ways to do things than the two of them meeting up at his house.

She didnt think the barn was an option; at least, not for very long. No need to confuse Slade by talking about things that he not only didnt remember, but also seemed to have no interest in. Not so much for his benefit as for hers; she didnt think she could deal with her own brother reacting with such confusion while she talked about their shared past.

Maybe it was best that she talked to Marco before she, well, talked to Marco.

Morphing into her Swallow-Tailed Kite form, she made a running takeoff out of the hay-loft and winged her way into the sky. Passing over the fields and roads on her way to the home of one of her fellow Animorphs, Shara considered what was beneath her. All of the houses looked pretty much the same from so high up.

Shed need to be a bit more creative if she was going to find who she was looking for.

__

(Marco,) she said, not wanting to rely on the short-ranged thought-speak that she was granted by morphs. _(If youre down there somewhere, stick your hand out of a window. Im in the air; Ill see you just fine. If youre in a position to talk, wave; if youre not, just let your wrist hang loosely.)_

Out of one of the many windows she glimpsed during her flight, a dark-skinned hand appeared; waving enthusiastically.

__

(All right,) she said, with a mental smile. _(Ill be down there in just a minute. Wait for me.)_

Marco gave her a thumbs-up, then withdrew her hand as she folded her wings. Diving for as long as she felt she needed to do so, she flared and swooped into the room. It was a bit messy, she couldnt help but notice; something that Marco most definitely did _not_ have in common with Cain.

The boy himself was sitting on his bed, an expectant look fixed on his face.

(Hey, Marco,) she said, hopping down off the window sill and alighting on the desk. (Do you know any places, other than the barn, where we could talk without being overheard by anyone?)

Grabbing a notepad from the drawer of his nightstand, Shara watched as he searched in vain for a pen, before bending over and plucking one out from under his bed. Even her father at his most absent-minded hadnt been one for leaving stationary under his bed; it was kind of funny. Looking over at what he had written, she cocked her head slightly: Shouldnt you be demorphing now?

(If you insist,) she said, with an amused chuckle.

Demorphing swiftly from her small, helpless-feeling bird form, Shara stretched a bit, before settling herself down in the chair by his desk. _(Is this better?)_

A bit weirder, but yeah. Considering the alternative, came the quick response. Why dont we just talk here? Its not like anyones going to overhear us.

__

(I didnt think youd be particularly interested in conducting a conversation entirely in writing,) she said reasonably. _(And, theres always the chance of your father coming in, isnt there?)_

Youd hear him before he got halfway up the stairs, though, right oh great and mighty shark-slayer? He was smirking as he showed her the message, and she found herself rolling her eyes at his antics.

__

(Yes, I would,) she said, and sighed. _(But Id rather not have to spend the entire conversation on alert for someone who might or might not come into the room. Thats why I wanted to set up a meeting with you at someplace thats not so occupied.)_

Makes sense, he showed her, then flipped the pad back up so he could write out something else. But, Dad told me that he was going to have to go to work for awhile tomorrow. Something about a big project or other, so Id have the whole house to myself. Id say thats the perfect time for you to come and have that little chat of ours, dont you think?

__

(I think thatd work out very well,) she said, with a nod. _(Ill see you tomorrow then, Marco.)_

XXX

See you tomorrow, Shara, he finished writing out, just as the girl herself finished morphing back into the white-and-black bird whose name he didnt remember. Nodding to him a last time, she flew out of his window and powered her way into the sky. At least, that was what she probably did.

He didnt see that part, since he was too busy scribbling out his part of their conversation, and then shredding it into unreadable pieces before throwing the scraps into his trash. Flopping back down on his bed, he stretched. He was still curious about what Shara was keeping from the rest of the group, but hed find out all of that tomorrow.

He could wait until then.

Walking over to his window, he stuck his head out and looked up into the sky. Shara was long out of sight by now, and the sun was beginning to set. He wouldnt be able to see the sunset, not from his room, anyway, and for a few moments he was almost tempted to go out to watch it. Just for a moment, though, since he wasnt really interested in that kind of thing.

Sitting back on his bed for a moment, he decided to head down for dinner.


	58. Respite

After a night that had been blissfully free of attempted mental invasions, Shara stretched and looked over at her brother. As Slade started to wake up, she smiled.

"Hey," she said, as his bright green eyes opened at last.

"Hey, Shara," he said, peering at her more closely as he sat up. "You look rested. You have a good night?"

"Better than most," she said, nodding.

"Thats good," he said, leaning back and closing his eyes halfway. "Shara?"

"Hmm?" she turned back to him, having started to stare out into the barn itself, in an absence of something concrete to focus on.

"Do you ever start to get the feeling that were not supposed to be here?" he asked, his eyes still at half-mast, seeming like he was speaking more for his own benefit than anyone elses. "Like, theres someone out there, and we should be out there with them, instead of here with the Animorphs?"

__

Only when Darkon tries to break into my mind, she thought to herself. "No, not really. Jake and the others treat us well, and Cassie provides for us. I dont really think theres anywhere else we could be that would have all of the things that we have right here. Besides, Jakes a good leader, dont you think?"

"Yeah," Slade said, looking up at the ceiling of the barn, his eyes open and clear at last. "Yeah, he is."

"Well, there you have it," she said; she didnt particularly like the thought of manipulating her brother like this, but there was no way in hell she was letting Darkon sink _his_ hooks into the last of _her_ family. "We stay."

"Yeah," he said, nodding decisively. "We will."

They had breakfast after that, and she wrestled with the tiredness that Slade was so obviously succumbing to. Once he was asleep, she walked out to the edge of the hayloft and morphed into her Swallow-Tailed Kite. Flapping her wings, she rose into the air and shot out of the barn door.

__

(Cassie,) she called, seeking the other girls mind out with her telepathic powers. _(Im going to be visiting Marco for awhile today. If Slade wakes up before I get back, tell him that for me.)_

Knowing that she could count on the other girl to do as she asked, and knowing also that Cassie was bound to have heard her request, Shara made her way back to the suburbs proper. It was going to be nice to have someone to confide in, even if she probably wouldnt be able to do it all that often. To say nothing of the fact that neither of them were really the type to confide in other people.

At least, not anymore.

When she arrived at least over Marcos neighborhood, she made straight for his house. His hand was waving out of the window, and she chuckled mentally, even as she tucked her wings and dove. It seemed she _wouldnt_ need to arrange a new all-clear signal between them after all.

Opening her wings and swooping in through the window of his room, Shara fluttered to the floor and gratefully began her demorph. The flying was nice, and it felt almost _right_ that she do it under her own power, but being in such a small body for too long had a tendency to make her edgy; probably more of the Radams tampering.

"So, I take it your fathers not here right now," she said, smiling.

"He left about an hour ago," Marco said, nodding. "So now Im all yours, and Im all ears."

"Thats good to hear," she said, her good mood starting to fade slightly; it wasnt that she didnt want to talk, but this story of hers didnt have much to smile about.

Unless you liked sick humor, at least.


	59. Shara's Story

"So, are you going to start telling this story of yours, or is this going to be some kind of a Q&A or something?"

"It all began on my familys annual camping trip," she said.

And so she told him, remembering all of the things that had happened as she did: the way the seemingly-placid ground had exploded into a veritable storm of tangled vines, spikes as long as her fathers fingers, and acid that had stripped the bark from nearby trees; the oppressive darkness of Darkons base, and the horrifying feel of that ancient, evil mind pressing into hers; the pain of the transformation, and the feeling of nearly having her basic humanity stripped away; the knowledge that she hadnt exactly escaped unscathed in any case. She told him all of it, and through it all, Marco just sat back and listened. He seemed to know that he didnt need to say anything, or else he just had nothing to say, but she was grateful for his support in either case.

"Then, I woke up in the barn, and you pretty much know what happened after that," she finished, feeling more calm for having unburdened herself to someone who seemed like he would understand.

"Wow; and here I thought the _Yeerks_ were bad news," he said at last, looking slightly uneasy. "These Radam of yours sound like they could eat Hork-Bajir for lunch."

"Im not so sure they couldnt," she said solemnly. "You saw how _I _handled those sharks, after all. Still, I dont think Ill be taking him on solo anytime soon. Hed probably attack one of you guys just out of spite."

"Yeah, youve probably got a point there, Shara," he said, still feeling a bit shell-shocked at the huge mass of revelations that a certain Teknoman had just dumped on him.

The Radam made the Yeerks look like E.T. in comparison: puny, feeble, and weak. And Darkon the guy may have had a stupid, Saturday-morning-cartoon name, but he sounded like the kind of person who would give _Visser Three _nightmares. Heck, hed just heard of the guy secondhand, and he had the heebie-jeebies just _thinking_ about him.

Not something he liked the idea of, but better to know than be wondering what happened when the Radam finally decided to make their first offensive. That they _would_ make one was a fact that couldnt be denied; they _were_ alien invaders, after all.

"Anyway, I should get back to the barn," Shara said, after the silence between them had gone on for long enough that it was starting to become slightly awkward. "Cassies probably starting to wonder about me."

"Yeah," he said, as she stood up. "Shara?"

"What is it, Marco?" she asked over her shoulder.

"You can always come back here," he said; they understood each other, so he thought it was only right that he offer her a sounding-board of sorts. "I mean, if you want to."

"Thanks, Marco," she said, with a gentle smile. "I might do that sometime."

There wasnt really anything more to say after that, and as he watched Shara go back to the window, morph, and then fly away, he sat back on his bed to think. There were a lot of things to think about, foremost among them of course just _how_ a small band of animal-morphing freaks was going to do any damage to the Radam. Sure, they did okay emphasis on _okay_ against the Yeerks, but one-on-one against any one of their Teknomen, they would all be killed.

That armor of theirs was nigh-impenetrable, and their weapons could cut through human and other flesh like butter. Sure, they had two Teknomen on their side, but given what Darkon had been able to do to Slade, he wasnt stupid enough to think that just _having_ them was enough. Theyd need something more.

"Too bad I have no idea what that _is_," he muttered, folding his arms and leaning back against his headboard.

Hed ask Shara more later, but he had a feeling that shed told him all the important parts of the story already. Still, it was always better to be sure. There just might have been something he missed.

He hoped so, for everyones sake.


End file.
